This Substack Live is part of an ongoing collaboration between All Rise News and MeidasTouch’s Legal AF.
In the span of one week, Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney turned Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche played prominent roles in a pair of motions alleging selective and vindictive prosecution.
In the first, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) challenged her prosecution in the aftermath of her visit to a private immigration detention center in May.
At the time, federal agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) at the gates of the Geo Group-operated Delaney Hall, resulting in a melee among the congressional delegation visiting the facility for oversight. Prosecutors charged McIver with assaulting law enforcement.
McIver says that bodycam footage she obtained during discovery debunks the government’s case — and that an outtake from one video ties Blanche to the order to arrest Baraka, whose case crumbled earlier this year in an embarrassment for the Justice Department.
The congresswoman’s motion quotes a federal agent saying: “we are arresting the Mayor right now, per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.”
As I explain in the video below, McIver’s motion extensively quotes statements from top-ranking Trump administration and Justice Department officials, including then-interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s remarks on a right-wing podcaster’s show.
In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Blanche’s appearance on Fox becomes a key piece of evidence for selective prosecution.
“Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went on television to say that the government began ‘investigating’ Mr. Abrego only after ‘a judge in Maryland…questioned’ the government’s decision to deport him, found that it ‘had no right to deport him,’ and ‘accus[ed] us of doing something wrong,’” Abrego’s motion said.
Blanche’s comments fit snugly in the central premise of Abrego’s motion: that he’s being prosecuted for having the “audacity to fight back.”
Watch our video breakdown of Abrego’s latest motions below.
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