Tonight in Your Rights: 'I'm his lawyer'

Blanche slips. Clayton claims he's "not an election denier," but won't admit Biden won. Plus, other observations in the legal roundup.

The standout line in the first day of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was quickly corrected.

“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche said of his current and former boss Donald Trump, before cleaning up his statement by adding that he “was his lawyer.”

The slip came during friendly questioning by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who asked whether Trump was his friend.

Under oath, Blanche suddenly resisted that characterization of his relationship with Trump, a man to whom he previously declared: “I love you, sir.” Now that his subservience to Trump is a liability, Blanche suggested that he has a strictly professional attorney-client relationship: “I’m not sure there’s very many people who have had a criminal defense attorney who calls that person their friend.”

It was a telling, emblematic moment of a hearing, showing Blanche keenly aware of his reputation as the enforcer of Trump’s campaign of retribution, personal protection and government self-dealing, and strenuously avoiding even the most obvious concession.

Blanche falsely denied that he had the legal power to release Jeffrey Epstein-related case files in the Justice Department’s possession before Congress ordered their disclosure. A federal judge specifically told him otherwise in August 2025, well before the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“The Government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein Files,” U.S. District Judge Richard Berman wrote last year.

Earlier today, Allison Gill and I analyzed Day One of Blanche’s hearing, discussing effective questioning by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) about the Acting AG’s role in the $1.776 billion slush fund, the tax audit release order, and the purported settlement agreement justifying them both.

We also discussed our view of the shortcomings of questioning by other members of the committee, failing to provide the full breadth of the failures and dysfunction of the Trump Justice Department under Blanche’s watch. Check out the archived video of our live-streamed conversation here.

Here’s more analysis of the important moments and other news of the day below.

The seeds of the next vendetta prosecution?

During an exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who pumped his fist in solidarity with insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021, Blanche suggested that he would be open to criminally investigating former special counsel Jack Smith for alleged false statements under oath.

The premise of such a probe would be built upon a lie: Hawley claimed that Smith misled Congress by testifying that the telephone toll records that he subpoenaed pursuant to his Jan. 6-related investigation only contained metadata, not the content of the messages.

This was Smith’s testimony in question from December:

Q: The toll records that you requested from the Senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?

Smith: No.

Question: The records that you requested, [did] the toll records from the members of Congress, include the content of text messages?

Smith: No.

Smith’s testimony was accurate, and Hawley’s suggestion to the contrary relies on sleight of hand.

Earlier this week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) issued a press release stating that he discovered evidence that Smith’s prosecutors obtained text messages from 44 members of Congress, but the documents that Grassley posted revealed that those text messages were different records entirely from the information at the center of Smith’s questioning.

According to a Justice Department letter, Smith’s then-assistant Thomas Windom obtained the text messages by writing the general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration. They were not records obtained via a subpoena. They weren’t toll records, and the requests sought the messages of White House officials, not the lawmakers with whom they communicated.

Blanche made clear that those pesky facts won’t prevent him from opening up an investigation.

“We take testimony in front of this body very seriously, yes,” Blanche replied, when asked whether he would consider probing Smith.

Clayton: “I’m not an election denier.”

Playing out simultaneously with Blanche’s hearing, Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney turned Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton indignantly denied being an “election denier” — while studiously refusing to admit without qualification that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential contest.

Adopting a familiar dodge, Clayton acknowledged only that Biden was “certified” the winner.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) wouldn’t let Clayton easily escape a straight answer.

“Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question — to have to indulge the president’s delusions?” Ossoff told Clayton.

As All Rise News previously reported, Clayton has become a regular fixture on CNBC, where he previously sowed baseless doubt on the recent California elections. Trump chose Clayton to lead the Southern District of New York, even though one of Clayton’s predecessors called him an “unqualified” choice.

In another standout exchange, Clayton claimed that he only recently learned that former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Fulton County, Ga., for the FBI’s raid and seizure of 2020 ballots. Ossoff roasted Clayton again about how his assertion “lacks credibility.”

Watch the exchanges here and here.

Uncanny timing

As Blanche sought Senate confirmation, he demonstrated the Trump Justice Department’s contempt for the advice and consent process for U.S. Attorneys.

Some contextual background is in order.

Before Wednesday, federal judges have disqualified Trump-installed U.S. Attorneys in at least five states: New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Virginia and California, where the appointees failed to secure Senate approval or judicial support. The same pattern continued with a sixth top prosecutor on the morning of Blanche’s testimony — this time in Seattle, Wash., where the Trump administration fired Roger Rogoff, merely an hour after the judges appointed him as U.S. Attorney.

Blanche once again made clear that loyalists trump qualified candidates inside his Justice Department, posting the message below on social media.

It should be mentioned that such standoffs between the Justice Department and judicial branch over unqualified U.S. Attorneys were unprecedented before Trump’s second term. Now, they’re routine.

Thursday begins with the second day of Blanche’s confirmation hearing, and Trump is expected to make an announcement that evening, widely expected to consist of conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

All Rise News will keep on top of both stories.