Devlin Barrett
speaker
272 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 9 Jun
Devlin Barrett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think in some ways, a vote on Todd Blanch's nomination will be a test of everything that's happened at the Justice Department in the last year.
Leaders of the Justice Department, including Todd Blanch, have fired more than 200 agents and prosecutors who worked on Trump-related cases or cases involving Trump's allies.
At the same time, they have pursued investigations against some of Trump's longest enemies, like James Comey, the former FBI director.
That's the kind of thing that raises a lot of concerns among current and former law enforcement officials who worry that the Justice Department is now being retooled and repurposed to go after the president's political targets, the people he thinks of as enemies, the people he wants to hurt.
I think if Todd Blanch were to be confirmed, that would be a kind of green light for the Justice Department to not only continue what it's been doing, but to go further.
That's my life.
Right, because this retribution campaign by the president has delivered some incredible scalps for the president and what he wants.
But it did so in a very legally risky way, a very – I think a lot of people would say factually risky way –
And as important as these cases are and as alarming as it has been to some people to see the president publicly order prosecution of people he doesn't like...
I think the unanswered question until Monday was, would the court system go along with this?
Would judges go along with this?
And the first cut, and it's not going to be the last cut, but the first answer to that question is an emphatic no.
It's a deep cut to the president and the administration in a couple of ways.
First, in the sense that he has lost, for the time being at least, these two centerpiece cases of his drive for retribution.
And it's also a deep cut to the degree that he is being told that the way he's running the Justice Department is not appropriate under the law, is not what the law says necessarily.
you can do with the Justice Department.
And another way to think about the significance of this moment is Trump has publicly declared time and again that people he doesn't like are criminals and that they should be prosecuted.
A lot of times, the facts and the law of what he's talking about don't really stand up to scrutiny.
And one of, I think, the great tests of this moment for the legal system and for the administration
is to what degree does Trump's version of reality impose its will on the court system?
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