‘I Know I’m Going to Get a Lot of Blowback’: NY Prosecutor Pitches MSNBC This Trump Defense Lawyer as New AG Nominee
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Mimi Rocah made a pitch on MSNBC for President-elect Donald Trump’s ex-defense attorney Todd Blanche to move up and replace Matt Gaetz as the nominee to head the Department of Justice.
Rocah, now the District Attorney for Westchester County, New York, joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell shortly after Gaetz announced he was withdrawing from consideration for attorney general. Gaetz received plenty of pushback over the surprising nomination and his withdrawal comes amid reporting about an unreleased House Ethics Committee report that includes allegations Gaetz paid for sex and more. Gaetz has denied all allegations.
Mitchell asked Rocah on Thursday if it would be “easiest” to move Blanche into the nomination for attorney general since Trump already nominated him for deputy attorney general. Blanche previously defended Trump in his New York hush money trial where he was convicted on charges of falsifying records to conceal payments to hide an affair. Trump continues to deny knowledge of the payments and the affair itself.
Rocah argued her work experience with Blanche and his experience in the Department of Justice made him a qualified pick.
She said:
Andrea, I’m going to say something that some people won’t like because I’m not here to vouch for Todd Blanche, but I do know him personally and more importantly I grew up with him in the southern district of New York so I literally know what he has been taught about the Department of Justice. Does that mean that under the weight of Donald Trump that won’t waver? I can’t sit here and say that. But I know that Todd Blanche, not as defense attorney, which was a different role, but Todd Blanche as a leader of the Justice Department knows what the Justice Department is supposed to be, that it is supposed to be the prosecutor of the people, that it is supposed to prosecute violent crime, fraud, political corruption, and I worked with Todd on those cases, I know that he likes those cases, that he believes in the mission of the department of justice to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.
The former prosecutor acknowledged she may get some “blowback” from viewers for the pro-argument for a Trump lawyer.
Rocah argued:
I know I’m going to get a lot of blowback on that because there are a lot of people understandably who have no faith anymore in our institutions or in the guardrails holding. But I think if there is someone who can be that person in this time — and I don’t mean resist everything that Donald Trump wants him to do because that won’t be his job, and that’s not what we’re here to ask for, we’re here to ask for someone to hold on to the Justice Department as it is meant to be doing the right thing, not a political thing, not carrying out retribution. And the last thing I’ll say is that he has experience as a prosecutor. For all the stuff about Matt Gaetz, he doesn’t know how the Department of Justice runs.
Watch above via MSNBC.
