Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Wednesday praised a senior prosecutor who angered President Trump, but noted that Mr. Trump could fire her at any time.
Mr. Blanche, days from a possible Senate confirmation vote to run the Justice Department on a permanent basis, was asked at a news conference about the recent decision by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to drop a case against a former Olympian who had been indicted on charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Ms. Pirro met on Monday in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, whom she accused of misleading the president about how the new pool lining fell apart so quickly after it was applied. Ms. Pirro argued that Mr. Burgum, in order to conceal his own missteps, had promoted a self-serving cover story of anti-Trump vandalism.
In his role as the deputy attorney general, a post he still holds as he leads the Justice Department on an acting basis, Mr. Blanche and his office have played a decisive role in opening investigations, seeking indictments and dismissing pre-existing indictments. But on Wednesday, he suggested he had played no role in the Reflecting Pool morass.
“I don’t approve or disapprove of decisions that our U.S. attorneys make in a general matter, but I am not going to talk about what we knew about the case or didn’t know about the case,” Mr. Blanche said.
Ms. Pirro was “doing a great job,” Mr. Blanche added. He said that the president had “every right to be extraordinarily frustrated with the damage done to our national monuments in this city and elsewhere.”
When the president was asked late Tuesday during a trip to the West Coast if Ms. Pirro’s job was safe, Mr. Trump said he had not “made a determination about that.”
During the news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Blanche, whose confirmation vote could come Saturday, insisted that the president had the right to fire Ms. Pirro or others in the federal government.
“He understands he has the power to do that,” Mr. Blanche said. “When he makes a decision about whether to fire a U.S. attorney or anybody else, that’s his.”
The post Blanche Defends Pirro but Says Trump Can Fire Her at Any Time appeared first on New York Times.
