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Liz Oyer Testified Against Blanche. Republicans Changed the Subject. | Bulwark on Sunday
00:15:30
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- [00:03]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bull Work on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined again, I guess maybe three weeks ago, Liz was with me by Liz Oyer, senior attorney in the Biden Justice Department. Before that, a prominent attorney in both the public sector and the private sector. And you can follow her and read her at her excellent substack, Lawyer Oyer, and also her relatively new, I think podcast. Is this really legal? I think that's one of those rhetorical questions that the answer these days is usually no. Is that right?
- [00:33]
B
That's right, Bill. Yep, unfortunately, that's right.
- [00:37]
A
We used to have a rule at the Weekly Standard. Our managing editor, Richard Starr, didn't like headlines with, with question marks because he said they're just a way of concealing the fact that the answer is always no. You know, but I, I like them personally. I think it's peaks interest. Okay, so you testified Thursday at the Blanche confirmation hearing. Deputy General Blanche testified Wednesday for six hours or something like that. Questions. You were on a panel of five witnesses. Three were talked about the Republican majority of the committee, two by the Democratic minority. It was you and Danny Bensky, the an Epstein survivor, had a teacher and high school teacher. Now, I think I just, I think people would be interested. I mean, how does that, well, what was it like? How does it work? You know, how did you, when did they ask you to testify? What went through your mind and deciding whether to do it or not? Just, just talk a little about the experience.
- [01:30]
B
Yeah, I've been very outspoken about my concerns about Todd Blanche's nomination. And when I was asked to testify, some members of the minority staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee reached out to me about a week before the hearing and asked if I'd be willing to testify. And it was a no brainer for me. I felt like it was my duty to my country to put it, put myself out there and share my own experience with Blanche and talk about the broader concerns that I have about his leadership of the Justice Department. I knew when I agreed to it, though, that it was not going to be a pleasant experience because so much of these congressional hearings is really performance art. They're not actually trying to get to facts and truth. They're trying to put on a show for the people in their districts. And the clips that they generate for social media and television, at the end of the day, I think are what they care about most. So, you know, it, it actually exceeded my expectations for how crazy and unhinged it could be. But at the end of the day I'm glad that I did it. I felt like it was the right thing to do for my country.
- [02:39]
A
No, thank you for doing it. I mean, I've testified only a few times before Congress after I'd left government. And they were mostly bipartisan sort of hearings and, you know, foreign policy things with people from think tanks and whatever. And yeah, it was a different, different era. But also, those were not the point what it free social media, but I think in most cases. But also people actually just wanted to have a discussion about whether it was wise to expand NATO, as that was one I testified at. I remember not, you know, not make a point that Donald, especially for the Republicans, it's the district. But also, don't you think it's sort of. They want their buddies in the Trump administration to say, hey, he stood up for us, so the next time they, they, they have something they want for the administration, they, they get treated well?
- [03:21]
B
I mean, yeah, that's exactly what's going on here. I mean, in my case, I think my testimony was damaging to Blanche. And so I didn't get any questions about Blanche. I didn't get any questions about the things that I said in my testimony. I got attacked by two Republicans who are allies of Todd Blanche. The two Republican senators from Missouri, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmidt, both really just tried to attack me without letting me speak, which was one of the really bizarre aspects of it. They just sort of talked at me and talked over me and didn't give me the opportunity to respond to anything they were saying. It really just wasn't. It was sort of very disingenuous. It wasn't really a good faith effort to have a conversation or to probe Blanche's qualifications. It was just sort of an attack on me. And of course, the hearing is not about me. Right. It's. It's about Todd Blanche. But they didn't want to talk about Todd Blanche. They wanted to talk about me.
- [04:18]
A
I mean, luckily, you have your opening statement and you're also your colloquies with Democratic senators that people can go back and look at or, or read. But, yeah, no, if you're nominated for something in three years, then they're entitled to attack decisions you've made or criticized decisions you've made in the past or decisions you didn't make actually. But you were part of an administration that made, I guess, is really most of the attacks. Right. But, yeah, it's a little crazy that they're there to confirm Todd Blanche's very important job and they take their time not to even try to rebut. I think that's a very important point you make. They didn't rebut your, you know, well worked out written statement of what Todd Blanche had been doing at doj. Why that should be disqualifying. There was no sense. Did they even met? Did they even attempt to defend Blanche? I don't remember.
- [05:01]
B
No, no, no. There was no discussion of Todd Blanche. It was all about the work that I did as part of attorney during the Biden administration. And there was a real attempt to portray President Biden's clemency decisions as though I had decided them, even though, you know, the clemency power rests with the president. I thought it was interesting that that was sort of their line of attack on me because I don't think that they would want to be in the position of having to defend Donald Trump's clemency decisions, which have just been incredibly, incredibly corrupt. And if is that the Justice Department is ultimately responsible for those decisions, you'd think that that would be disqualifying for Todd Blanch, because the misuse of the clemency power has really been unprecedented under, under Donald Trump.
- [05:47]
A
And if I recall, the. The criticisms were mostly that President Biden, I say this quite legally, but used the clemency power to commute sentences from the death penalties. He's against the death penalty to. There aren't that many, but there are some federal death penalty cases, I guess, convictions to commute them to life in prison. Yeah, but without parole. I mean, it wasn't as if he's like letting people out on the streets who were doing things, you know, three days later. And that was. They just wanted to make their law and order pro death penalty points, I suppose.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this was a very weighty matter, obviously, commuting death sentences, and it's something that the Biden administration was interested in at the end was commuting the sentences of people on federal death row. There were only 40 people, and there were different potential ways to go about that, which included commuting all of the sentences or commuting only some of them. What President Biden decided to do at the end of his presidency was to commute 37 of the 40 sentences from death sentences to sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. So these 37 people are serving their sentences now in maximum security prisons, and they're not going to be executed, but they're going to die in prison. And that was really the focus of the attacks from Josh Holly and Eric Schmidt was the decision to do that. And what was actually really upsetting about it is I, I think they were just sort of using it as a political, very disingenuous sort of political talking point by showing pictures of the victims of these really heinous murders. And everyone agrees that, you know, the, the crimes are really heinous and the attacks were just so vitriolic and disingenuous that my 17 year old son, who was with me at the hearing, he was sitting behind me at the hearing, said to me afterwards, they made it sound like you murdered those people. And he was genuinely really upset. I mean, he's a young adult, he's going to be a senior in high school. But just to hear the way that two United States senators were talking about the issue and talking about me and my, my role in it, I think it was very confusing to him how that could be presented in that light. And it really was just so disingenuous. And actually it's really dangerous. I mean, that's the other thing that bothers me about it. I've literally been getting death threats since that happened. I have, I opened my email and, you know, there are messages in my email inbox that say, I hope that your whole family gets murdered and someone who does it gets clemency from the President. Which is honestly, like, it's, it's been really upsetting. It takes a toll the way that this political discourse is escalating under Donald Trump and people like Josh Hawley and Eric Schmidt egging it on. It's just, it makes it impossible to have a legitimate conversation about issues without putting yourself and your family at risk.
- [08:49]
A
No. Well, I'm, I mean, thank you for doing it, but I'm sorry about that and I hope you're taking, you know, precautions. It's just, I hate to even say, you know, it's such a terrible thing that people, you testify before Congress, invited by, and you're obviously, you were one of the two Democratic witnesses, but invited by the Senate Judiciary Committee as a whole. You're not testifying before some rump group of Democrats. Not that would excuse it either. But official witness before an official committee of the United States Congress, sworn in, testified, and then, you know, you get these, tell the truth and then you get these death threats. It's really, really awful. I guess one reason they wanted to attack you is they didn't really want to attack, I think the other Democratic witness whom you were seated next to, Danny Bensky, even. They probably think attacking an Epstein, very eloquent and courageous Epstein survivors. A Bridge too far and decided to push too far for a lot of other people online, of course, but maybe, maybe for most US Senators still. I just curious, did you have a chance to talk to her much? What was your sense sitting there of her? And then also, I guess the Republican just like hearing as a whole, but I'm particularly interested in Danny Bensky.
- [09:53]
B
So, yeah, she was really outstanding. She's very brave and very thoughtful and she did an excellent job of making the point that this is not a political issue. I mean, really, most of the problems with Todd Blanch are things that we should be able to agree are inappropriate for the Attorney General. And her focus was really on handling of the Epstein matter from a non political perspective, just sort of a basic prosecutorial perspective. She made the great point that there are, you know, 6,000 documents related, I'm sorry, 6 million documents that the Justice Department has related to Jeffrey Epstein. And you would think that a prosecutor like Todd Blanche would be salivating over a case like that, as she put it, because there's so much material there and so many potential leads to build a case. She said that she and her fellow survivors were really shocked that he wasn't having a field day with, with this as a basis to investigate and prosecute. And instead he really was putting the burden on the survivors to come forward with evidence and to try to make the case themselves. And that, you know, is something that really should be shocking and alarming to people on both sides of the political spectrum. Her perception, which I agree with, is that Blanche is trying to protect powerful men. And if that comes at the expense of vulnerable women, you know, his view is so be it. His priority is to protect the powerful men. He doesn't want to open any cans of worms that could lead back to Donald Trump or other powerful men in his orbit by investigating this further. So she was really, really effective in explaining that this is something that everyone should be offended by and that makes Blanche unfit to lead the Justice Department. I'm sure, you know, that he finally was like bludgeoned into meeting with the Epstein survivors by Thom Tillis. He basically did it with a gun pointed to his head. He decided only when Thom Tillis said he would not vote for, for his nomination if he didn't meet with the survivors, that he had to do it. And it sounds like the meeting was. I mean, he showed up as himself, which is this really sort of callous, unempathetic man who didn't want to be there.
- [12:13]
A
Yeah, that's a. That meeting sounds really extraordinary. You can't even pretend to be empathetic. He said I do think deep down really believes the victims are the Trump and the other wealthy Epstein associates. Wealthy at least said the least of it. But anyway that doesn't matter. They'd be as it would be as bad if they I suppose were less wealthy. But it happens that that was Epstein circle of course who, who abused to say the least these women. And he, and yeah he seems to have no, he's never had any interest in investigating any of them. They tried and one forgets the sequence on July 6th a little over a year ago, 2025, they tried to stone to close the whole thing down. There was that joint Justice FBI statement. Nothing, just no, nothing to investigate. And then that the stonewall didn't work is the way I've been thinking about it. And so they went to a cover up A week later or 10 days later, Blanche was in the Situation Room. I just find this still so mind boggling at the White House in a political meeting about how to handle this and there's very good reporting on it now which is really uncontested. And he Blanches sort of the point person, he's the Deputy Attorney General. I mean you should say a word in a second about what that, how amazing that is for the Justice Department to be in this kind of political meeting. And then a week after that he's flying down to Florida, I guess it was right to meet with Epstein's convicted co conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. And then a week after that they move her to a much nicer prison camp facility. So I mean that for me that sequence of three weeks has not gotten enough focus in a sense. It's so seems to me just to bring it so make it so crystal clear about what was happening there.
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B
Yeah, it's really undeniable that that was totally corrupt. It was a totally corrupt decision to try to protect the President. And I think that's confirmed by the reporting that came out later about this meeting in the, in the Situation Room at the White House in which Blanche basically agreed to run political interference for the President. And that was the reason that he went down to Florida to meet with Ghislain Maxwell while she was in prison. It was to protect the President's political interests, not because of a desire to get to the truth or to do the right thing. It was to protect the President. And it really just illustrates that Blanche has never stopped acting as Donald Trump's fixer and his personal attorney at any point. He says that he is now, you know, acting on behalf of the United States. But he couldn't even keep his story straight. During the hearing, he was asked by Senator John Kennedy, are you and are you friends with President Trump? And he said, no, I'm his lawyer. And then he corrected himself very quickly. I was his lawyer. Now I'm. Now I'm the. The acting attorney general. But, you know, and I think that sort of Freudian slip is really where his mind is. He's Donald Trump's lawyer.
- [15:01]
A
He.
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B
That's always going to be what he puts first, the interests of the president.
- [15:07]
A
I don't know. Are you shocked as I am that the deputy attorney general went to this meeting? There are, there is a White House counsel and substantial office, the White House counsel, deputy counsels and assistants and so forth. They are supposed to give legal advice to the president and to others at the White House and a take that can be different from the Justice Department's take. And that's a complicated job, White House counsel. But, you know,