Adam Schiff spent years trying to take down Donald Trump. Now he’s sitting across from Trump’s pick for Attorney General, and he walked away looking worse than when he started.
The California Democrat turned a Senate confirmation hearing into a personal grievance session, and the man on the other side of the dais wasn’t in the mood to play along.
Schiff launched into a dramatic soliloquy about who Todd Blanche used to be — and Blanche shut it down cold.
What Happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche forcefully defended his record during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing after Senator Schiff questioned his handling of matters related to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation. The exchange occurred as lawmakers considered Blanche’s nomination to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Blanche has served as acting attorney general since April, following the departure of Pam Bondi.
Schiff went on a long tirade about Blanche’s past work experience, first bringing up several investigative cases and accusing the acting attorney general of violating ethical rules by allegedly creating conflicts of interest.
Blanche wasn’t having it.
Blanche fired back: “You can’t accuse me of violating my ethical rules and then lie about what I did.”
Schiff then launched into a long-winded statement: “What I don’t understand Todd Blanche, what happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor of the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for? What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law?” Schiff continued: “What happened to the prosecutor who said there wouldn’t be a whiff of political partisanship and then prosecuted the president’s enemies over seashell cases over making a video stating the plain law and constitution?”
The answer Schiff got was not the one he scripted.
“You asked me what happened to Todd Blanche. I am still here,” the nominee shot back. “I am the same exact person I was when I was a federal prosecutor in the SDNY [Southern District of New York], which is do the right thing and do everything you can to keep communities safe.”
The Mar-a-Lago Documents and the Conflict of Interest Claim
One of the hearing’s most contentious moments came when Schiff questioned Blanche about Volume II of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report, which concerns the classified documents investigation involving President Donald Trump. Schiff argued that Blanche should have supported releasing the report and suggested that withholding it presented a conflict of interest because Blanche had previously represented Trump.
Schiff asked: “How is that not an abundant conflict of interest? Refusing to release to the public an investigative report of an investigation into your client?”
Blanche began responding by noting that decisions regarding the report had involved the courts. Schiff interrupted before Blanche could finish.
Schiff pressed: “No, no, no, no, no. The department’s position under you, Mr. Blanche, the department’s position under you, Mr. Blanche, was to not release the report. But if you went into court asking them to release it, it would be released by now. So how is that not a patent conflict of interest?” Blanche rejected Schiff’s characterization of the timeline, stating that the decisions Schiff referenced occurred before Blanche assumed his current position.
Blanche maintained that ethical rules required him to recuse himself from matters involving his former client and argued that Schiff’s accusations incorrectly attributed actions to him that occurred before he became acting attorney general.
Schiff also tried to quote a biographer to score rhetorical points.
Schiff said: “I’ll tell you this, I think Robert Caro got it right when he said power doesn’t corrupt as much as it reveals. I suspect it has just revealed who you are,” referring to a journalist and biographer beloved among American liberals.
And Blanche answered that too, directly and without flinching.
The Man Lecturing Blanche Has His Own Legal Problems
Here’s where it gets rich. Schiff spent the hearing positioning himself as a guardian of ethical conduct and the rule of law. But Schiff himself is under a Department of Justice investigation for alleged mortgage fraud — a fact that went conspicuously unmentioned during his performance.
The US Federal Housing Finance Agency sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice alleging that in “multiple instances,” Schiff allegedly “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, impacting payments from 2003-2019.”
Schiff has yet to be charged and has denied wrongdoing.
But denying it and being cleared of it are two different things. And Schiff knows the difference — which is exactly why he set up a legal defense fund to handle the mounting expenses.
Schiff questioned Blanche on matters involving the Internal Revenue Service despite the Democrat being investigated in 2025 by the Department of Justice over alleged mortgage fraud. He then created the “Senator Schiff Legal Defense Fund” during the probe.
A spokeswoman for Schiff told Fox News Digital: “It’s clear that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies will continue weaponizing the justice process to attack Senator Schiff for holding this corrupt administration accountable. This fund will ensure he can fight back against these baseless smears while continuing to do his job.”
And yet there he sat, lecturing a nominee about ethics.
It’s worth remembering that Schiff is a man who received a preemptive pardon from outgoing President Joe Biden in the final hours of his presidency. Schiff notably served on the partisan January 6 committee and was among lawmakers who were granted preemptive pardons on President Joe Biden’s final day in office in 2025.
Biden’s own Justice Department had argued that accepting a pardon carries an implicit acknowledgment of concern. Schiff accepted it anyway — after publicly saying he didn’t want it.
When the possibility of presidential pardons arose, Schiff stated in a CNN interview, “It would be the wrong precedent to set. I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving a broad category of pardons to members of their administration.” Nevertheless, on January 20, 2025, with just hours left in his presidency, Biden issued preemptive pardons to the members and staff of the January 6 committee, among others.
He said he didn’t want it. He took it. And now he lectures others about integrity.
What This Hearing Really Tells Voters
Blanche’s confirmation path is not without complications. His nomination faces an exceptionally narrow path through the committee after Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden death left Republicans with just one vote to lose, assuming every Democrat opposes the nomination as expected.
But the Schiff exchange tells a story that goes beyond vote counts.
The left-wing senators who spent years weaponizing congressional power against Donald Trump — running impeachments, sitting on partisan investigative committees, leaking to a press corps that treated every allegation as settled fact — are now in the minority. They can’t subpoena. They can’t impeach. All they can do is grandstand at confirmation hearings and hope somebody clips the footage.
Schiff has built his entire political brand on the idea that Donald Trump represents a unique threat to the rule of law. That argument requires Schiff to be the principled alternative. But a senator under federal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, who accepted a preemptive pardon he publicly said was wrong, who set up a legal defense fund while investigating the man now nominating the Attorney General — that senator has a credibility problem that no amount of Robert Caro quotes can fix.
The Trump-appointed First Assistant US Attorney for Central California, Bill Essayli, weighed in after the exchange: “Facts are not Senator Schiff’s strong suit.”
And Blanche, for his part, didn’t need anyone to come to his defense. He handled it himself — calmly, directly, and without the theatrical flourishes Schiff relies on.
The hearing will continue, the committee will vote, and the Senate will eventually decide whether Blanche becomes the next Attorney General. But the moment that will be remembered from this particular day is not anything Schiff said.
It’s the moment Blanche looked at him and said he’s still the same person he always was.
Schiff, of all people, probably wishes that wasn’t true about himself.
Sources: Daily Caller, RedState, Fox News, The Hill, Lifezette, Megyn Kelly, Fox News Digital, USA Housing Information