Todd Blanche says Trump "absolutely" would have gone to prison without a 2024 election win, indicating we must dig for answers about election fraud that might have produced an imposter in the White House

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Donald Trump almost certainly was headed to prison if he had not won the 2024 presidential election, Acting Attorney General and former Trump personal lawyer Todd Blanche said in a recent television appearance, according to a jointly published report at The Independent and Yahoo! News. Under the header "Acting AG Todd Blanche says Trump 'absolutely' would have gone to prison if he lost the 2024 election," Josh Marcus writes:

“Is it an accurate statement to say he either wins in '24, wins the White House — it’s either the White House or the big house?” Fox News anchor Sean Hannity asked Blanche on an episode of the Hang Out with Sean Hannity show that was released on Tuesday.

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” Blanche responded.

As we will show shortly, Blanche did not just say that he expected a Joe Biden or Kamala Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) to "go after" Trump or even bring an indictment against him. But he said that Trump "absolutely was headed to prison if he did not win in November 2024. As Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Blanche probably knew his client was vulnerable to criminal charges, and that a competent DOJ likely could present a compelling case before a federal jury, one that likely would result in a conviction.

Would the U.S. Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling in Trump vs. United States, issued on July 1,  2024, have saved Trump from prison? It's hard to say without knowing the basis for a possible Trump conviction. But it's hard to imagine that any activities leading to a conviction could fall under the "official acts" language at the heart of the Trump ruling? On the other hand, many legal experts thought the high court would never even hear the immunity case, much less pull such protection for Trump out of thin air.

Blanche did not touch on election fraud in the Hannity appearance, but it hangs over a number of obvious questions his words raise: Did Trump and his allies, particularly Elon Musk, have incentive to pull out all the stops to ensure a Trump victory? Did they resort to blatant fraud, and what tools did they have at their disposal to pull off such a scheme? We already have addressed such questions here at Legal Schnauzer, as have other journalists, online investigators, computer scientists, and election-integrity experts.  For example, we wrote a piece on Nov. 21, 20205, under the headline "Voting integrity expert Spoonamore says a recount likely will show Kamala Harris won the election, which had signs of Elon Musk's ties to dubious acts." That post begins . . . 

A hand recount would "most likely show" Vice President Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election, according to a "duty to warn" letter to Harris from voting-integrity expert Stephen Spoonamore. Further, Spoonamore states: "In my view, a capable and skilled series of exploits, electronic tools, and hacks were used to change the Presidential vote in all seven swing states.  These activities have reversed the outcomes in at least Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin."

News of Spoonamore's missive comes on the heels of our post yesterday about a similar letter from Duncan Buell, Ph.D., chair emeritus and NCR chair of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina. 

We will pick up on the Spoonamore letter and related issues in upcoming posts. But first, let's return to Todd Blanche's appearance with Sean Hannity. Josh Marcus writes:

[Blanche] pointed to the cloud of legal scrutiny hanging over Trump during the 2024 election, which included special counsel Jack Smith’s multiple cases against the Republican in Washington and Florida, as well as the then-candidate’s guilty convictions in New York in his hush money trial.

“Don’t forget he had a D.C. case breathing down his neck,” Blanche said. “He had the Florida case which had been dismissed, but they were appealing it, and then he had a judge in New York who, there’s no scenario in which he wasn’t going to send Trump to prison.”

The Independent/Yahoo! report then turns to a number of fortuitous events that saved Trump -- most notably, his election win. But it also shows the peril Trump was facing. Marcus writes:

Following Trump’s election victory, the special counsel dropped the federal cases against the president-elect, citing the precedent against bringing an indictment or proceedings against a sitting president.

In congressional testimony last year, Smith said he was confident he would’ve secured a conviction against Trump on his allegations that the Republican conspired to interfere with the 2024 election.

“The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial,” Smith told the House Judiciary Committee. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

The president continues to challenge the New York conviction, both in state court and in an effort to move it to federal court.

Since returning to the White House, the president has vowed to seek payback for the alleged “weaponization” of the justice system he claims to have suffered.

Trump's DOJ is investigating an alleged decade-long “grand conspiracy” between officials who investigated or prosecuted the president.

As part of the settlement in his recent suit against the IRS, Trump also sought to create a nearly $1.8 billion “slush fund” to compensate allies and victims” of government “weaponization.” 

Todd Blanche surely did not intend for this to happen, but his conversation with Sean Hannity opens up a truckload of questions, and No. 1 on the list is this: Have we been living under an imposter president since January 2025? Has Trump been attempting hostile takeovers of key journalistic institutions -- including The Washington Post, CBS News, and CNN -- to keep them from asking hard questions about how he returned to office? It's time for news organizations of all shapes and sizes to look at how Trump returned to power and launched an assault on American democracy. We intend to do our part, and we hope you will join us.