Grassley Opens Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General

Prepared Opening Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
The Nomination of the Honorable Todd Blanche to be Attorney General of the United States
Wednesday, July 15, 2026

I want to welcome everyone this morning as we consider Todd Blanche's nomination to serve as the 88th Attorney General of the United States.

Congratulations on your nomination, Mr. Blanche.

Before we get started, I'll set out some ground rules.

I'll handle this hearing as our committee handled the nominations of Attorneys General Bondi and Garland.

I want everyone to be able to watch without obstruction. If people block the view of those behind them, or speak out of turn, it's not fair or considerate, so officers will immediately remove them.

I'll give my opening remarks, and then I'll invite Ranking Member Durbin to give his remarks. Then I'll call on Senator Moody to introduce the nominee.

Following that introduction, Mr. Blanche will provide his opening statement and then we'll turn to questions. Each senator will have 10 minutes to ask questions. I intend to gavel down after Mr. Blanche answers the members' last questions.

Mr. Blanche, thank you for being here.

As I've said before, this is one of the most important offices in our country. You went through a rough Senate confirmation a little over a year ago.

I appreciate that you cooperated with this committee at every step and fulfilled your responsibilities in good faith while simultaneously running the world's largest law office.

The Senate has already judged your fitness for high office and confirmed you as the Department's second-in-command.

Today, we consider you for a promotion. We are not starting from a blank slate. You have a track record.

My Democratic colleagues have relentlessly attacked the Department and your and President Trump's leadership. They've called the Department a "disgrace" and suggested the agency is broken.

Their media allies and activist networks have echoed this message.

Are these assertions correct? Let's put aside partisan criticism for a moment and assess the evidence.

The Department's primary duty is to enforce our nation's laws and to keep Americans safe. So how is the Department stacking up?

The answer, for those who care to judge fairly, is a record of success.

The United States has the lowest murder rate since 1900. The FBI has captured eight of the top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives. Violent crime arrests by the FBI are up 184%. More than 849 individuals have been disrupted from conducting terrorist attacks. The ATF has seized more than 44,000 illegal firearms.

That is not "failure."

What about the Department's record on illegal drugs?

Since January of last year, the DEA has made more than 6,300 fentanyl arrests. It's seized more than 5,000 kilograms of fentanyl powder, 55 million fentanyl pills, 240,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and 1.2 million kilograms of cocaine.

The fentanyl alone amounts to more than 428 million fatal doses.

That is not a "failure."

And what about protecting children?

Our committee has fought for years, on a bipartisan basis, to protect our nation's children from the horrors of exploitation.

Ranking Member Durbin and I are leading landmark legislation, theJames T. Woods Act, to tackle this very issue. And once again, our partners at the Justice Department have a record of success.

The FBI has arrested 2,900 child predators and human traffickers - a 70% increase from 2024 - and located more than 6,940 child victims. The U.S. Marshals have recovered more than 1,182 missing children.

That doesn't sound like failure to me. In contrast, the Biden administration diverted prosecutors from child sex crime cases to January 6th cases. That's unbelievable.

My Democratic colleagues have criticized this Justice Department for a lack of transparency. I've been critical as well, as I am with every administration, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.

But no one cares more about oversight than I do, and in all my years of congressional oversight, this Department has been the most responsive to my requests.

The numbers back this up.

Since January of last year, the Department has produced approximately 43,000 pages of records in response to requests from the Senate and House. To put that in perspective, this is approximately three times the number of records produced during an equivalent time by the Biden Justice Department.

The Department has also released more than 3.3 million pages of additional records, with more coming every day.

Their work is not done, and I expect continued responsiveness and declassification, but credit should be given where credit is due.

A few more successes:

• They've established the National Fraud Enforcement Division to address more than five billion dollars in fraud against the American taxpayers.

• They've reduced the immigration case log by more than 468,000.

• They're challenging and eliminating racist and unlawful discrimination in the government and private sector.

• They're exposing and redressing the Biden-era weaponization of the Department against political opponents.

• They've captured and are prosecuting the dictator Nicolas Maduro for crimes related to narcoterrorism.

The list goes on. This Department is keeping Americans safe, and the numbers back that up.

Mr. Blanche, you should take pride in delivering the law -and order promise the American people voted for in 2024.

But at the hearing today, I don't expect that my Democratic colleagues will talk about these successes. I expect the same playbook we've seen for nearly every one of President Trump's nominees: pure partisan obstruction and attack.

This approach is the same one we've seen over and over.

In fact, it's become such a pattern that I'll just quote myself from a speech I delivered almost exactly a year ago, regarding another nominee.

Last July, I said, "Since the very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in a relentless obstruction campaign for nearly every one of President Trump's nominees. Their playbook has included maximum procedural obstruction, unfair media attacks, repeated attempts to allege misconduct and demands for delayed consideration, records and investigations… Like clockwork, just before a hearing or vote, we get another breathless accusation that one of President Trump's nominees needs to be investigated."

Here we are again. Like clockwork, indeed.

The Democrats, their media allies, and the activist networks have launched the expected crusade against Mr. Blanche's nomination.

To be clear, there are fair questions for Mr. Blanche.

I don't agree with how Mr. Blanche or the Justice Department has handled every matter, and I've demanded answers and will continue to do so.

But many of the criticisms aired in recent days just completely miss the mark. I'll give one example.

We've seen a coordinated campaign from former Justice Department employees opposing Mr. Blanche's nomination. My Democratic colleagues and the partisan media have publicized their letter, framing the signatories as a group of nonpartisan "career civil servants."

Of course, they fail to mention that the letter was coordinated by the same group that engaged in the partisan and misleading campaign opposing Judge Bove's nomination.

They also don't mention that the letter's signatories include a who's who of partisan activists, including former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Jack Smith's partisan prosecutors, J.P. Cooney, Molly Gaston and David Rody.

And they certainly don't mention that Mr. Blanche has received letters of support from organizations representing more than 600,000 law enforcement officers, 23 State Attorneys General and scores of former Justice Department officials.

From my vantage point, if the people who engaged in the worst partisan lawfare this country has ever seen have a problem with Todd Blanche, that's a good thing in my book.

As sure as sunrise, today, some of my Democratic colleagues will tell us that Mr. Blanche is a uniquely terrible nominee.

Before they do so, however, I'd urge them to remember the boy who cried wolf, and to take a long look in the mirror before lecturing anyone about partisanship at the Justice Department.

This brings me to my next subject. I'd like to discuss developments in my and Senator Johnson's Jack Smith investigation.

Smith's team subpoenaed the National Archives in June 2023.

That subpoena sought text messages from cell phones connected to Trump White House staffers.

The date range for the records was from October 1, 2020, to January 20, 2021.

The Archives' then-General Counsel, Gary Stern, emailed Thomas Windom, one of Smith's deputies, on August 21, 2023, at 12:19 p.m.

That email said responsive records were ready.

On August 21, 2023, at 12:45 p.m., Windom had already downloaded the texts - and shortly after that, other DOJ and FBI personnel involved in the case did as well.

Whistleblowers told my office that Smith didn't pass these records through a Filter Team.

The Justice Department has confirmed that fact in a letter to the committee: "the Special Counsel's Investigative Team apparently bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages."

The DOJ letter to the committee also said "the Special Counsel's Office had previously been made aware of the risk that records relating to Member communications could raise constitutional concerns and might be privileged under the Speech or Debate Clause."

Even if Smith's team had been instructed to look for congressional or other privileged information, it wouldn't matter, because in this example, it appears the filter team was entirely bypassed.

Based on the information provided to the committee, Smith's operation cut corners and blew through constitutional stop signs instead of respecting them.

The White House messages obtained and reviewed by Smith's team included communications with many senators and representatives.

The communications included messages with members on this committee, including this senator.

The subject matter of those member communications included core constitutional responsibilities, such as congressional legislation, resolutions and investigative work.

It also included other information irrelevant to the Jack Smith case.

Instead of that information being walled off, it was intentionally shared.

This is another example of how this misguided investigation wasn't normal and demands further investigation.

Jack Smith's operation was a runaway political train that improperly obtained congressional information.

I've requested Acting Attorney General Blanche to allow members to review their records.

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