Todd Blanche worked a Republican rally in North Carolina this week, asking voters to send Michael Whatley to the Senate. He did it as the sitting Attorney General of the United States. He didn't take a detour into politics from a legal career — he came to the Justice Department straight from Donald Trump's own defense table.
The New York Times reported Wednesday night that Blanche has been campaigning for GOP candidates ahead of November's midterms since his confirmation last month — conduct the paper says breaks a norm no attorney general has crossed since before Watergate. The Times traces the line to Richard Nixon's first attorney general, John Mitchell, who was so entangled in Republican politics that he quit the job to run Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign, then went to prison for his role in the scandal that followed. His successor, Edward Levi, drew the boundary that held for fifty years across both parties: the nation's top law enforcement officer does not work the campaign trail while running the Justice Department.
Blanche crossed it.
Deliberately.
