Todd Blanche Panics Under Questioning on Slush Fund, Ghislaine Maxwell

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared to be panicking during a Senate Appropriations hearing Wednesday as he tried to justify President Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and his own visit with convicted child sex offender and Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. 

“You’re gonna assure us that President Trump will get no proceeds from this [fund] … his family will not get [any proceeds]?” Democratic Senator Jack Reed asked in an intense line of questioning on the recently announced $1.8 billion fund.

“Correct,” replied Blanche. 

“And who will direct the distribution of these, who gets the money?” 

“From the victims’ fund? Well, there’ll be a commission of five individuals that’ll be set up, and they’ll take in requests and claims and decide whether to do anything—”

“Who will name the commissioners?” Reed interrupted. 

“I will … whoever the attorney general is … and one of them will be done in consultation with leadership of this body,” said Blanche, ignoring reports that Trump himself will have ultimate say on who remains on the committee.

After pointing to the resignation of the top lawyer at the Department of Treasury following the announcement of the fund, Reed again tried to point out the lines being crossed with the fund.

“This all seems to be an obvious abuse of power by the Department of Justice, by the president,” the Rhode Island senator said. “He negotiated essentially with himself. You’re his appointee. The IRS are his appointees. He’s the plaintiff. And the American people I don’t think are surprised that certainly all this money is going to his friends, or people … in his orbit. Will you ensure that none of this money goes to anyone convicted in the January 6 attack on the Congress?”

“Well, the commissioners will determine who is eligible to receive the money,” Blanche replied. 

“Who are the commissioners?”

“They’re not named yet.”

“Who will name them?” 

“The attorney general will. It’s not me.” 

“With the suggestion of the president of the United States, your boss?”

“I have no idea if he will or not. I really don’t.” 

“I would be shocked if he didn’t tell you exactly who to put on, and I’d be more shocked if you did not put them on. This is a travesty of the law.” 

Reed then pivoted hard to Blanche’s interview with Maxwell and her special treatment in prison. 

“You had an opportunity to go down and talk to Ghislaine Maxwell. And then a few days later she was transferred from a high-security prison to a very comfortable, very comfortable—” 

“That’s not true. It’s just not true,” Blanche responded. “She was transferred from a low-security prison to a low-security prison. You’re looking at me.… That’s verifiable.” 

“Well I don’t think at the other prison she had her own room, she had access to a private shower, she could have pet therapy—” 

“I don’t know if any of that is true, I’m not disagreeing with you—”

“It is true, and you should know it,” said Reed.

“I should know that? Whether an inmate has access to her own shower?” 

“No, no. This is a person of extra special interest to the president of the United States. He’s known her. Why did he send you down to talk to her?” 

“He didn’t send me. I went. You think President Trump called and asked me to go interview a witness in federal prison? I didn’t!” 

“Yes, I do, frankly,” said Reed, talking over Blanche. “Because you know what? The deal was in. He needed someone he could rely upon to talk to her and say, ‘What would she say if she was asked about Jeffery Epstein?’ And you were the perfect choice. And you went down there and suddenly, shazam! She’s out of what is a more confining situation into a much more relaxed federal prison.” 

“Every word that I asked her is recorded and available for you to review,” Blanche said, ignoring the question about Maxwell’s new digs, which included special access to staff-only areas and a service puppy, according to The New York Times.  

“This hearing I think is exposing something, which is to me very frightening,” Reed replied. “From my perspective, you have very little faith to the Constitution and the people of America, and you’re the president’s consigliere.” 

“Your perspective is completely wrong, senator,” said Blanche.

“Well, I think the facts will prove me right. Thank you.”

In a brilliant metaphor for the state of our country, billionaire and septuagenarian President Donald J. Trump stood next to a massive hole in the White House lawn to give a press conference on Tuesday.

Trump is attempting to have an enormous ballroom for himself built in the hole—more fitting symbolism given the state of the American economy.

At the press conference, Trump picked up a poster-board mock-up of the ballroom and began to ramble.

“It’s so beautiful,” Trump said, holding the mock-up to his chest. “See, I look so thin. They’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s gotten so thin.’ It’s because I’m holding this. You don’t have to look at my waist. You can look at this. You saw enough of my waist all over President Xi in China.”

A few things here. First, the fact this is one of the more coherent jokes delivered by the president during his second term should tell us all something about the state of his mental health.

Secondly, Trump’s waist was “all over” Xi Jinping during his China trip? Phrasing, dude.

Thirdly, this is a rare piece of self-deprecating humor from our commander in chief, who almost never jokes about his own pudginess. Indeed, Trump’s bodily measurements have been contentious for years—his 2025 medical listed him at six feet, three inches tall and 224 pounds, which was comparable to Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown.

That medical exam, however, also revealed that Trump’s body mass index was in the “overweight” category. (Trump fell into the “obese” category in 2020, so this was actually an improvement.) That, plus the president’s penchant for Diet Coke and McDonalds, means even an egotist like Trump understands he’s no Chalamet.

Trump has for months claimed the ballroom project will be entirely funded through “donations,” but Senate Republicans, at the president’s request, have directed $1 billion in taxpayer money to go toward ballroom “security.” The allotment was recently deemed spurious by the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, so Trump has, of course, moved to have her fired.

Tuesday’s press conference above the pit was actually catered by the White House. Bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches, Coca-Cola, and Diet Coke were on offer, with nary a fruit or vegetable to be seen.

New Jersey Republican Representative Thomas Kean Jr. hasn’t voted on a single bill since March 5, but his constituents might be none the wiser.

Kean’s office has been blasting out cheery newsletters, written in the congressman’s voice, despite his long-standing absence.

“In Congress, I am focused on delivering real results for our law enforcement and local communities,” read one recent e-letter. “I will always stand with our men and women in blue.”

The letter was quickly called out by other politicos. Aaron Fritschner, chief of staff to Democratic Representative Don Beyer, wrote on X that “Tom Kean’s office is still sending out constituent newsletters like the guy hasn’t vanished off the face of the earth.”

CNN journalist Andrew Kaczynski called the newsletter’s tone “creepy and weird,” given Kean’s inexplicable disappearance.

Kean consultant Harrison Neely fired back, claiming that the charge was “rich” coming from a “‘journalist’ who has called the Congressman’s daughter and family members of staff.”

In return, Kaczynski snarked: “Consultants for Tom Kean are now attacking reporters for inquiring about his whereabouts.”

Kean was missing in action for weeks before he offered any explanation. His meager response was the culmination of a small pressure campaign fronted by journalists, his constituents, and his tristate Republican allies.

Last month, Kean told House Speaker Mike Johnson over the phone that he was dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.” Neely told Politico that Kean will be “back on a regular full schedule very soon.”

Since then, Johnson has confessed he doesn’t know when Kean will return, while aides to GOP leadership have said they “don’t have any idea what’s going on” with Kean.

Kean was elected to represent New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2022, and is months away from being thrust into a contentious midterm reelection cycle. He is currently unchallenged in the Garden State’s Republican primary, scheduled for June 2, but is likely to face tremendous opposition from Democrats come November. Over the last several months, New Jersey’s 7th congressional district has shifted from a “lean Republican” advantage to a total toss-up, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

His absence in the race has apparently inspired his competition: The topic practically consumed his potential competition during a Democratic debate on May 12, according to the Bergen Record.

President Trump’s grasp of the Iran war is becoming more unhinged.

Speaking to the press outside of the White House Tuesday with his prized ballroom under construction behind him, Trump bragged about the economy in his first presidential term, claiming that it was “the best economy we’ve ever had” and that “this term is going to blow it away, I think,” even with the Iran war.

“I thought the market would go down 25 percent, and I was OK with that to get rid of a nuclear potential holocaust. Would have been a nuclear holocaust. So, going down 25 percent’s OK when you get rid of a nuclear holocaust, so, uh, most people agree with me,” Trump said.

Trump went on to brag about how the war is being received by the American people, telling reporters, “Politically, I’m doing good.

“Everyone tells me [the war] is unpopular, but I think it’s very popular. When they hear that it’s having to do with nuclear weapons, weapons that could take out Los Angeles, could take out major cities, very quick, when they hear that—I tell you what, when we explain it to people, I don’t really have enough time to explain to people. I’m too busy getting it done,” Trump said. “I think it’s frankly very popular, but whether it’s popular or not popular, I have to do it, because I’m not going to let the world be blown up on my watch. Not gonna happen.”

In reality, the war is so unpopular that it has brought down Trump’s approval rating to its lowest level ever, according to a recent New York Times poll. The same poll found that most Americans think the war isn’t worth the cost or that the economy is going to improve. Meanwhile, Trump goes back and forth between threatening to break the ceasefire with Iran and claiming a deal is close. It’s little wonder that most Americans lack confidence in the president.

As the Department of Justice launches a $1.776 billion fund to pay damages to the president and his allies, Democrats in Congress are launching an investigation into the man overseeing the whole thing: acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Senators Adam Schiff, Dick Durbin, and Richard Blumenthal want to know whether Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, has recused himself from President Trump’s personal civil lawsuits against the government.

“Since last year, the Department has systematically dismantled the agency’s internal guardrails, gutting both the career ethics staff and the Office of Professional Responsibility, and has refused to provide any answers to Congress about these egregious actions,” the senators wrote in a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Administration Jolene Lauria.

The letter contains 10 questions about whether Blanche has recused himself from Trump’s cases, as well as whether he has received ethics advice about his past representation of Trump in personal matters. The senators are also asking, “What is the last date that Mr. Blanche provided personal legal advice to Donald Trump or served as his personal attorney?”

The letter cites CNN’s report last week that Blanche was told in March 2025, after he joined the DOJ, that he had to recuse himself from Trump’s personal cases against the government by Joseph Tirrell, the top ethics lawyer in the department.

“Recent public reporting revealed that in March 2025, less than two weeks after assuming the role of Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Blanche was explicitly and formally advised by the Department’s top career ethics lawyer that his recusal from legal cases involving President Trump in his personal capacity was necessary,” the letter said.

A DOJ spokesperson told CNN that Blanche “is recused from many cases before DOJ. In any cases that are still ongoing where he previously represented someone, he is recused.”

“To the extent DOJ is investigating something related to the President for which Todd was previously representing him, then hypothetically yes, he would recuse,” the spokesperson said, but added that this remains a “hypothetical.”

That’s not particularly reassuring, considering that Trump now has a slush fund to compensate his supporters whom he thinks were unfairly punished, and this could include anyone from January 6 insurrectionists to election deniers. On top of that, Tirrell was fired in July, and he’s currently suing the DOJ. Are ethics no longer a concern at the DOJ?

The Senate parliamentarian is a nonpartisan referee for the legislative branch, a role that has quietly existed for almost a century. So of course Donald Trump is mad at the current one.

Trump pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a private phone call Monday to fire Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, according to reporting by Semafor and NOTUS. Two days earlier, MacDonough ruled against Senate Republicans allocating $1 billion for the president’s ballroom project in their budget reconciliation bill.

Despite Trump claiming for months that his ballroom would be entirely funded through donations, his cronies in the Senate have tried to sneak in an extra billion for “securing” the space (which is not even built yet). The proposed reconciliation bill also funds the Department of Homeland Security through 2028.

MacDonough, the first woman to be appointed parliamentarian, has served in the role since 2012. One of her jobs is to review all reconciliation bills and cut provisions the Senate cannot make a good case for. While her cuts aren’t technically binding and can be overruled with a majority vote, ignoring her would be a huge break from precedent—and we all know the Senate loves precedent.

Thune was dismissive of the idea of firing MacDonough, according to NOTUS.

“No,” the majority leader told NOTUS when asked if he would consider the idea. “We’re going through a process that we go through every time we have a reconciliation bill and the people on both sides are mad at the parliamentarian. That’s been true.” Thune also let things slide in 2025 when Trump moaned to him about MacDonough’s rulings on Medicaid provisions.

The phone call represents yet another attempt to influence the legislative branch from our current commander in chief, who routinely decries people and policies that don’t benefit him on social media.

Republicans are not expected to take out this “security” allotment but instead adjust the clause’s language and potentially ask for less money. If MacDonough clears the new version, the bill could go to the Senate floor for a vote in the next few weeks.

Just one lone Republican has spoken out against President Trump’s corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy—who was just defeated in a primary against Trump-endorsed Representative Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming—sounded off in opposition to the slush fund.

“We are a nation of laws; you can’t just make up things.… It is as if somebody sued themselves and agreed upon a settlement with themselves that’s going to be funded by the rest of us,” Cassidy told NBC’s Sahil Kapur Monday night. “Now if that’s the case, what? Wait a second! I just came off the campaign trail. People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting the slush fund together without a legal precedent.”

Cassidy’s right. Trump created the slush fund as part of a settlement after suing his own IRS, setting aside nearly $1.8 billion of taxpayer money for anyone who felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration— from January 6 rioters to right-wing think tanks, to the president’s own super PAC. The fund’s guidelines also note that once a recipient has received their money, the Trump administration has “no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.”

While the Republicans maintain their complete radio silence on the president’s self-enrichment scheme, Democratic senators have launched a separate probe into Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche and whether he’s actually recused himself from the president’s personal legal matters given that he used to be Trump’s personal lawyer.

Bari Weiss might soon be forced to hand over the reins to CBS News.

As Paramount closes in on its potential deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, executives at the networks are considering avenues to remove Weiss from her position overseeing CBS News.

The top brass is reportedly having informal discussions about changing Weiss’s mandate, particularly as the groups look ahead to a potential merger with CNN. Instead, they would bring in a new, more experienced executive to run the department, giving Weiss “less control over the linear product,” reported Puck News Monday.

It’s unclear how formal the talks to reorient Weiss have been, but she would likely lose day-to-day control over several major CBS properties, including Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes. Weiss would maintain broad editorial influence but would largely be shifted to oversee the news division’s digital growth.

A spokesman for Paramount told Puck that “Bari has the full support of Paramount and David Ellison as the editorial leader overseeing CBS News and 60 Minutes. Reports suggesting otherwise are inaccurate.”

Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist, was tapped as the newsroom’s newest chief late last year, despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.

Her tenure has so far lasted seven months, but her business decisions atop the news giant have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America’s prestige news media circuit.

What was once crowned the “gold standard” of broadcasting, and the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on a 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Donald Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who had been deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, whom Weiss replaced with the likes of Peter Attia—who was ousted from his role as an on-air contributor shortly after his hiring was announced due to his various ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet Weiss’s appointment was merely the cherry on top of a large portion of recent chaos at CBS. In the last year, parent company Paramount undermined itself by settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits with Trump over CBS’s fair and accurate coverage (in an apparent bid to butter up the administration ahead of a multibillion-dollar merger with SkyDance). That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling the groundless lawsuit.

While meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week, President Trump suggested that China, the U.S., and Russia work together to fight the International Criminal Court.

The Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources, that Trump himself raised the idea. The White House didn’t mention the proposal in its fact sheet about Trump’s visit, and its spokespeople declined to comment. But Trump has railed against the ICC in the past, demanding in December that it change its founding document to guarantee that it wouldn’t charge himself or any other American officials.

Trump, along with his Republican allies in Congress, has also blasted the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In February 2025, the White House imposed sanctions on the court itself, and last August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went further by sanctioning the court’s judges.

Russia has its own concerns about the ICC, as the court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump probably thinks that with this potential alliance, he could nullify possible ICC charges against the U.S. and Israel, and curry favor with Russia in the process.

The U.S. has a law on the books, the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which allows it to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free any members of the U.S. military and “covered allied persons” who are detained by the court. As egregious as this law is, apparently it does not go far enough for Trump, who thinks he and Israel are unbound by any international laws.

The U.S. Treasury’s highest-ranking lawyer quit just hours after President Trump announced his “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—a brazen attempt to dole out $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to his allies, supporters, and himself.

Treasury General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned shortly after the fund was approved on Monday, according to The New York Times. Morrisey has yet to publicly comment. He served for only seven months.

The fund—created by Trump in exchange for dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS—allows anyone who feels they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration to seek damages. This includes, but is not limited to, January 6 rioters, right-wing think tanks, and the president’s own super PAC. While Trump claims he “wasn’t involved in the whole creation of it,” he controls who sits on the board of the fund.

There’s also a massive disclaimer that states that once the funds are disbursed, his administration has “no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse.” The move preemptively dodges any future legal issues that may arise from awarding funds to people who went to jail for assault and sedition (and have committed other crimes since).

The outcry has been swift and widespread, with Senator Elizabeth Warren calling the slush fund an “insane level of corruption—even for Trump.” California Governor Gavin Newsom said it was “waste, fraud, and abuse in the flesh.” Maybe those same feelings about this blatant self-enrichment scheme got to Morrissey.