Cory Booker accuses AG nominee of picking ‘Trump over truth’

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker grilled acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Wednesday during Blanche’s lengthy confirmation hearing to become the Justice Department’s permanent leader, accusing Blanche of “favoring the interests of a president and the powerful” instead of the American people.

In a heated exchange during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Booker blitzed Blanche with questions about how he treated President Donald Trump’s political foes compared to Trump’s supporters and friends. He cited as examples Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat whose arrest outside a federal migrant jail Blanche authorized last year, and Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted child sex trafficker who Blanche personally visited in prison.

Booker, a Democrat who also served as Newark’s mayor before he joined the Senate, reminded Blanche that prosecutors dropped the trespassing charge against Baraka two weeks after he got arrested in May 2025 outside Delaney Hall. The episode prompted the federal judge overseeing the case to admonish prosecutors, and Baraka to later sue for wrongful arrest.

“Your role is not to advance political agendas. Your allegiance is to the impartial application of the law, and to uphold due process for all,” Booker said, quoting the judge’s admonishment.

Blanche, though, has “chosen Trump over truth” and “corporations over the Constitution,” Booker charged.

Blanche countered that he didn’t “order” the arrest but instead “authorized the arrest, which is my job.”

Trump’s former personal attorney, Blanche became deputy attorney general when Trump took office in January 2025 and then acting attorney general in April after Trump fired Pam Bondi.

“This is why your nomination should fail. The attorney general’s client is not the president. It’s the American people. You’ve been protecting one man for most of your career. For years and years and years. He has demonstrated himself to put undue pressure. This is why he was impeached. This is why he was criminally indicted,” Booker said. “If your record and your testimony today should show us anything, it should show you, in my opinion, that you should not be confirmed to this job.”

The two men talked over each other so much as Booker’s questioning intensified that Blanche complained: “You can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers.”

After Booker’s time was up, Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah who serves on the committee, read portions of a letter into the record at the request of the committee’s chair, Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa.

In the letter, the Newark Police Superior Officers Association threw its support behind Blanche, applauding his “unwavering commitment to the rule of law, the fair administration of justice, and the constitutional rights afforded to every citizen, including the due process rights of law enforcement officers.”

The union represents top brass in the Newark Police Department. Union officials did not respond to the New Jersey Monitor’s request for comment.