Trump Packs The Justice System As Judges Deliver A Spate Of Losses

Todd Blanche is sworn in as Attorney General is sworn in today. Will Scharf takes the White House counsel’s office September 1.

Will Scharf hands President Trump an executive order. Photo: Aaron Schwartz/UPI

Donald Trump keeps losing in court — 21 straight, by Reuters’ count — and he has stopped trying to fix that with better arguments. He fixed it with lawyers he already trusts: his own. In one weekend, the two attorneys who defended Trump as a private client took the two offices that tell the executive branch what the law allows. Trump stopped needing to win. He hired the two lawyers who now decide what a loss costs him.

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche — the lawyer from Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial — as attorney general at 4:31 on Saturday morning, 50–49. On Sunday night Trump named Will Scharf, the lawyer who won him presidential immunity at the Supreme Court, White House counsel, replacing David Warrington on September 1, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Bloomberg reported. Blanche now runs Main Justice. Scharf will sit down the hall from the Oval Office. A day and a half, start to finish.

Trump spent that same weekend the way he has spent the year: losing. Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia blocked his $400 million White House ballroom on Friday, 2–1 — Congress approves before the East Wing comes down, they ruled — and gave him 14 days to run to the Supreme Court. Reuters published its tally the same day: 21 straight federal defeats since January in Trump’s drive to pry voter rolls out of the states, before judges appointed by presidents of both parties, nine cases still pending. Hours after Blanche cleared the Senate, Trump signed an executive order to sidestep the birthright-citizenship ruling the Supreme Court had already handed down. “Trump to Supreme Court: Make Me,” The Bulwark headlined Monday.