Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), the chair of the influential House Oversight Committee, told reporters Wednesday that he is pushing to have acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testify in front of the panel this summer about his handling of the release of millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The testimony comes at a tough time for Blanche, who was tapped by President Donald Trump last week to lead the Department of Justice on a permanent basis and is facing a high-stakes confirmation battle in the Senate.
Blanche can’t lose any Republican support if he wants to stay atop the DOJ. To advance his nomination to the full chamber, he faces a tight vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is split 12-10 between Republicans and Democrats. A deadlocked vote would kill his confirmation.
“Whether there are the votes to move him through the committee, I don’t know the answer to that,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said last week. Any unflattering news cycle created by his testimony could present problems.
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Blanche will need to get the approval of Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican who has repeatedly broken with the Trump administration.
“The key for Todd, or anybody going through Judiciary Committee, is being pretty tight on Jan. 6. They better not have said for one minute that the people that beat up police officers … were righteous people,” Tillis said last week. “You come even close to saying that, you don’t have a [chance] of getting my vote in Judiciary.”
Comer told reporters Wednesday that he’s been communicating with the Justice Department and that he hopes Blanche will appear before the House committee in July.
“The main thing that we have for Blanche is the question on what, if any documents are left out there,” Comer said. “So that’s the main question.”
Comer’s call for Blanche to testify comes after former Attorney General Pam Bondi told the Oversight Committee in a recent transcribed interview that Blanche was responsible for overseeing the release of the Epstein files.
Democrats on the committee have also been eager for Blanche to appear.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the ranking member on Oversight, told reporters that Democratic members also want Blanche to testify — even more so than Bondi.
“It’s not enough to just get Blanche in,” Garcia said. “We have to have Blanche under oath, it’s got to be videotaped and released to the public.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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