Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) blasted Todd Blanche’s bid to become attorney general, accusing Republicans of abandoning Congress’s oversight responsibilities and allowing Donald Trump to profit from the presidency without consequence.
Booker argued that lawmakers failed to adequately scrutinize Trump while advancing Blanche, the president’s former personal defense attorney, to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
His comments came after the Senate judiciary committee cleared Blanche’s nomination to permanently lead the Justice Department on Tuesday, voting 12-10 along party lines. The outcome followed Monday announcements from Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) that they would support Blanche heading into the committee’s vote.
“To me it is ridiculous, the corruption that we have normalized in America,” Booker said during the Senate judiciary committee hearing. “That presidents’ children can go out and sit on boards and make money. That is wrong, and that is corrupting. But they have become so obsessed with the millions that the Bidens have made, that they have ignored completely the billions of dollars that the Trump family is making.”
“That is like being obsessed and using a magnifying glass to study the stain on the living room carpet, when behind you is a mountain of excrement covering the living room couch and coffee table,” he continued. “This is so outrageous, the lack of proportionality going on with my colleagues. It is laughable.
SENATE COMMITTEE ADVANCES TODD BLANCHE’S ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINATION
Booker, who has been rumored to be interested in mounting a 2028 presidential bid, said he had hoped the committee would impose meaningful checks on the administration before moving Blanche’s nomination forward.
“Why have people on both sides of the aisle given up on any trust in government? It’s because we are surrendering any shred of integrity left. And now we’re letting an attorney general become the highest law enforcement officer in the land and putting no holds whatsoever,” Booker said.
“I had hope for two weeks that we would get something, two weeks that we would have something substantive to stop the world’s greatest presidential tax cheat from cheating. And we’ve done nothing. And this man is going to now sail to the floor, and history is going to show it,” Booker added.