During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing held before the Congressional recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) questioned Deputy Attorney General nominees about alleged justice department misconduct.
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NewsTranscript
00:00from California to Florida and I thank you for your attention and look forward
00:05to answering your questions.
00:08FBI emails and other records to the public regarding Arctic Frost, the FBI's
00:35case against Trump. Those records show that antitrust Trump FBI agent Thiebaud
00:42drafted, opened, and advanced the information that became the basis of
00:47Jack Smith's electoral case. The records further show that the work was done in
00:54violation of FBI rules. The government is supposed to produce impeachment evidence
01:00to defense counsels. So, did the government produce emails and records
01:06between Thiebaud and his team of agents to defense counsel, including the ones
01:12that I recently made public? No, Senator. Okay. You represented President Trump
01:22against both Jack Smith's lawfare cases. During the course of those cases, defense
01:30counsel raised issues involving DOJ and prosecutorial misconduct. Beyond that,
01:37which is public already, are you able to share with this committee additional
01:42examples of alleged Justice Department misconduct? Thank you, Chairman. Yes,
01:50for sure. Two things come to mind. The first, and a lot of this actually is
01:55public, if you look if you look very long and hard, it just never reported. The
01:59first is, when President Trump was indicted in Florida first, the
02:06prosecutors in that case initially asked the court to not allow
02:11President Trump, the defendant in that case, to see the documents that he was
02:17charged with, okay, to see the evidence against him. The initial
02:21submission said they didn't think that the former president of the United
02:24States had a right to see the evidence against him. That's something that even
02:28terrorists who are charged often get to see, at least to some extent. Secondly,
02:35three months later, when President Trump was indicted in DC, the prosecutors
02:41in that case asked the judge to start a trial December 11th of the same year,
02:47notwithstanding the fact that Jack Smith knew that he was producing over 11
02:55terabytes of discovery to President Trump and the defendants. He also knew
03:00that President Trump was going to be on a trial in New York, a civil trial
03:06brought by the AG in New York, for much of the fall, and that he already had a
03:10trial scheduled in Manhattan to start in the early spring. He also knew that Judge
03:17Cannon had already scheduled an evidentiary hearing the same day in
03:22Florida that they wanted the trial to start in DC. Notwithstanding all that,
03:28that was their position, and Senator, excuse me, Chairman, the frustration, and
03:34if I'm frustrated, I continue to be frustrated, is that the Department of
03:39Justice knew that that was happening. Nobody stopped it. Nobody stepped in and
03:44said, hey, that's not the way we do things at the Department of Justice. They just
03:47let Jack Smith do it. There are other examples. When the
03:52Supreme Court decided that the immunity decision on July 1st, Jack Smith went
03:57right back to the grand jury, removed almost nothing from the indictment, and
04:00filed another charge. Department of Justice stood by and let that happen.
04:06That, I think, was a gross miscarriage of justice, Chairman. Later on in
04:12September, once again, they filed a brief that has never been filed in any case in
04:20the United States criminal Department of Justice history. They just
04:25filed something. There was no motion pending. They knew it was a month and a
04:28half before the election, and so they filed a hundred and seventy-something
04:31page brief that had no basis in the federal rules of criminal procedure.
04:36Apparently, they got permission or clearance from the Department of Justice
04:41to do that. Those are the two examples that always come to mind
04:46when asked about what happened, and to this day, I think that that was a
04:51travesty of justice. Ms. Slater, so I can get a couple questions to you. Answer
04:59this first one fairly short, although it's important for another longer answer.
05:04If confirmed, what will be your top priority in the antitrust division? Thank
05:15you, Senator. As the president said, the task is to apply the antitrust laws
05:20vigorously and fairly with clear rules of the road for all. I'm very concerned
05:29about the rising costs of prescription drugs. I believe consolidation in the
05:33health care industry and anti-competitive practices by both brand
05:38and generic drug companies, as well as by pharmacy benefit managers, contribute to
05:45these high costs. I hope I can count on you to address the anti-competitive
05:51practices of these industries. The three biggest companies have 85 percent, and
05:56most of them are owned by insurance companies, so it seems to me there's
06:00something very anti-competitive there. I'm not going to ask you for a
06:05commitment, but I'm going to ask you to look at that, and that you'll take
06:09companies to take steps to make sure that those rules are abided, the
06:16antitrust rules are abided by. I'd like to get back to Mr. Blanche. The New
06:25York Times said many people in the legal community asked, quote, why would he ever
06:31take that case, meaning the Trump case, end of quote. So, and we know that you
06:40suffered, you got kicked out of your law firm, that's what I understand. What did
06:45you learn from your representation of President Trump? Well, Chairman,
06:50Representative President Trump was the greatest job I've ever had. I think
06:56if I'm confirmed, my new job will surpass it, but it was the greatest job I ever
07:00had. It was an honor, and I learned a ton. It opened my eyes, for sure, to what
07:07happens when politics takes the place of justice, and both you and the
07:12ranking member talked about this, and I couldn't agree more that politics should
07:16never play a part in the Department of Justice, and I saw with my own eyes in
07:21Manhattan, with the Manhattan case, I saw it in the Georgia case, I saw it in
07:25both Jack Smith's prosecutions, I saw it in elected officials trying to keep
07:28President Trump off the ballot. It opened my eyes to something that I
07:33hadn't seen when I was just a prosecutor in New York trying to put gang members
07:37in jail. Thank you both.