Todd Blanche defends attending MAGA rallies as an active Attorney General, and asks Democrats to give him a call if they want him at their events

A reporter pressed Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday over appearances at MAGA political rallies, asking whether that role clashes with the complaint his department had just filed against federal judges, Mediaite reported. The questions came after the Justice Department announced a judicial misconduct complaint aimed at federal district judges in Minnesota.

Those judges had spoken to The New York Times about the department’s handling of ICE cases in the state. The outlet called the filing rare and said legal analysts criticized it. Judge Patrick Schlitz, one of the judges named in the complaint, put out a statement answering the filing, the report said.

The reporter framed the rally appearances as a break from a long-standing practice in which a sitting attorney general stayed away from political rallies. The question then turned on whether Blanche was holding the bench to a different standard from the one he applied to himself.

A reporter ties rally appearances to the Minnesota complaint

The reporter asked, “Mr. Attorney General, you have engaged in partisan activities. You have appeared at political rallies, and it has long been the norm that the sitting Attorney General did not do that.”

He continued, “Are you blurring the line by being a political actor in certain circumstances, and yet expecting something different from the bench, where they may have concerns about underlying conduct? Did you review any of the underlying conduct in Minnesota that they expressed concerns about?”

Blanche said the department does review that underlying conduct. He said he completely disagrees with what the judges told The New York Times about the prosecutors. “It’s not right. It’s not true,” he said.

He argued that the complaint process exists, so he does not have to argue the facts with a sitting federal judge who has a case in front of him or her. “Of course not. And so that’s exactly why this process isn’t wrong,” Blanche said.

He then separated that dispute from his own public speaking. Blanche said the rules and laws governing what he is allowed to do are available for anyone to read, and that he is not violating any. He said an ethics official with 16 or 17 years in that work reviews and approves everything he does outside the building, and some things inside it.

“If Democrats want me to come and speak at their rally, they can just give me a call,” Blanche said. He said the message would be the same one he gives at any rally: the department is fighting to make America safe again and going back to the basics of law enforcement.

That message, he said, is about arresting people he called bad guys and getting drug dealers off the streets. “And I’ll say that to a Democrat or a Republican,” he said. He added that he sees the criticism, and that his remarks focus on crime coming down and on what he called the great things the president is doing.

Schlitz answered the ethics question from the judges’ side. “As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” he wrote. The ethics debate over what federal officials may say in public is far from settled, as when Todd Blanche weighs a Supreme Court appeal after federal judges blocked the DOJ from accessing state voter rolls in 22 cases.

He pointed to a February advisory opinion from the Committee on Codes of Conduct, which he said stressed that federal judges may “speak and write on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence.” “That is exactly what I did,” Schlitz wrote.

After laying out the ethics review and the open invitation to Democrats, Blanche said he did not know what the question was asking.