Saturday rewind: Blanche's backpedal
All Rise News dissects the Acting AG's contradictory appearances on Fox. Plus: Analysis of Florida gerrymandering, Kash Patel's assault on the press, and more.
During his media tour about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s indictment, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made multiple appearances on Fox News, contradicting himself in the two interviews.
First, Blanche told Laura Ingraham that there was “no allegation or information in the indictment that suggests” that the SPLC shared information gathered through the informant program with law enforcement. The SPLC quickly cried foul in a motion asking a judge to order the government to retract the “false statement,” revealing numerous examples showing informant-gathered information being used to disrupt crimes and monitor extremist groups.
Blanche essentially admitted that was true some five days later on the network’s Sunday show.
“It is true that over the years they have selectively shared information with law enforcement,” Blanche told host Shannon Bream. “That’s well documented and there’s no dispute there. They aren’t charged with any of that conduct.”
Federal prosecutors cited Blanche’s second appearance to claim that no further retraction was necessary.
This week’s All Rise News playlist for Legal AF begins with a deep dive into the incident, contrasting the two videos and a growing public record about the informant program. The SPLC said that informant-gathered information led to the creation of an extensive dossier that the FBI used to monitor the white supremacists on the ground at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — and helped disrupt multiple crimes, including a planned terrorist attack on a synagogue and LGBTQ bar in Las Vegas.
Also this week, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of advocacy Seth Stern sounds off on reports of FBI director Kash Patel’s widening vendetta in the wake of The Atlantic’s exposé about his drinking and erratic behavior.
Florida-based voting rights advocate Jasmine Burney-Clark describes her lawsuit to block Gov. Ron DeSantis’s partisan gerrymander, and election expert David Becker reacts to reporting that the Trump Justice Department wants to subpoena every poll worker and volunteer who reported for duty during the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County.
Free subscribers can watch my breakdown on Blanche on YouTube here — or all of the other videos on the All Rise News playlist of Legal AF.
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