Another in an ongoing series:
Dear Senator;
I am a resident of Pennsylvania and a constituent of yours and I'd like you to answer a question or two.
Recently the DOJ interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, now imprisoned on charges of sex trafficking, regarding what she knew about the financier Jeffrey Epstein.
She was interviewed by deputy AG Todd Blanche.
In an analysis piece, CNN reported:
Critics have cried foul that the DOJ official interviewing Maxwell was Blanche, rather than a non-political prosecutor who has been involved in the case who would have much more expertise. Not only is Blanche a top political appointee of Trump’s; he’s also his formal personal lawyer.
“The conflict of interest is glaring,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday on X. “It stinks of high corruption.”
What’s more, Blanche appeared on a podcast last year with Markus and labeled him a “friend.”
On the other hand, The New York Times reported:
At the meeting, [Blanche] will have to walk a careful line, balancing his current responsibility to pursue the public good by getting what he can out of Ms. Maxwell against his erstwhile responsibility to defend Mr. Trump against any possibly embarrassing information that she might eventually provide.
Legal ethics experts said that Mr. Blanche was likely not affected by a formal conflict of interest by negotiating with Ms. Maxwell as both a top official of the Justice Department and the former lawyer of someone who, in theory, could be implicated by her statements. Still, they said, his involvement in the talks created a murky situation rife with potential pitfalls and complexities.
“This ought to be handled by someone who is disinterested in the results because if they are not, then they can’t be trusted to do what’s in the public’s interest,” said Bruce Green, who teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School in New York. “The problem with Blanche is that he is likely not disinterested not only because he used to be Trump’s lawyer, but because Trump put him in his high office in the Justice Department.”
Does any of this concern you, Senator? Wouldn't it all be solved by releasing all the Epstein files?
I'll await your answer, Senator.
As always, whatever answer I get from the Senator (more likely, his office) I'll post here.
