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\n

Todd Blanche was visibly frustrated during an exchange with Sen. Cory Booker as part of his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers,\u201d Blanche said, raising his voice. \u201cI\u2019m under oath, and I can answer the questions as I choose to answer them.\u201d <\/p>\n

The back-and-forth took place as Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, was questioning Blanche \u2014 President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as attorney general \u2014about attending a dinner hosted by David Ellison, the head of Paramount, while the Justice Department was investigating Paramount\u2019s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t even let me answer, man. That’s incredible,\u201d Blanche said at another point in that exchange.<\/p>\n

Booker also pressed Blanche about his meeting last summer with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, contrasting it with Blanche\u2019s claims earlier in the day<\/a> that he would be prohibited from meeting directly with victims of Maxwell or her co-conspirator, the late Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

The senator called Blanche\u2019s claim \u201cutter nonsense,\u201d adding that \u201ccounsel can be present, or a client can waive their right to have counsel. But you\u2019re a lawyer. You know this. That was not truthful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last summer, when he was deputy attorney general, Blanche took the highly unusual step of interviewing Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, over the course of two days as part of an effort by the Trump administration to quell outrage over its handling of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n

Earlier Wednesday, Blanche demurred when asked by the top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, to meet with 10 Epstein victims present in the hearing room, saying, \u201cthey have lawyers, as you know. I\u2019m prohibited from meeting directly with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was stunned earlier by your conversation with one of my colleagues that you wouldn\u2019t even commit to meeting with the survivors, but you did meet with Ghislaine Maxwell,\u201d Booker told Blanche.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Todd Blanche was visibly frustrated during an exchange with Sen. Cory Booker as part of his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. \u201cYou can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers,\u201d Blanche said, raising his voice. \u201cI\u2019m under oath, and I can answer the questions as I choose to answer them.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}