By Tom Hicks | September 19, 2026
Editorial Note:
Off Script separates documented facts from analysis and opinion. Links to primary reporting and supporting material are included throughout.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has found himself an interesting side gig: campaign rallies.
On Wednesday, the man running the United States Department of Justice took the stage at a North Carolina rally for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley. President Donald Trump was the headliner. Blanche praised Trump and Vice President JD Vance, discussed the administration’s record on crime, and called Trump “the greatest president of our generation.”
This wasn’t some Justice Department conference where a Republican candidate happened to wander into the room. It was a campaign rally. (Associated Press)
And it wasn’t Blanche’s first trip into electoral politics. He spoke at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month. Before that, he appeared at a Long Island event with Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, an appearance that prompted Public Citizen to file a Hatch Act complaint asking the Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Blanche had crossed the legal line separating federal employment from partisan campaigning. (Public Citizen)
The Justice Department’s answer is straightforward. Blanche isn’t doing anything wrong, it says. He attends political events in his personal capacity, reimburses appropriate travel expenses, and gets approval from DOJ ethics officials.
That’s an answer. It isn’t the end of the story.
THE FIREWALL DIDN’T FALL. SOMEBODY TOOK IT APART.
For decades, the Justice Department has operated under an expectation that goes beyond whatever conduct prosecutors can squeeze through the technical language of the Hatch Act. The people entrusted with federal law enforcement are supposed to keep some distance from partisan campaigns because Americans need to believe prosecutors aren’t wearing team jerseys.
After Watergate, that distance became particularly important. Presidents would still appoint attorneys general, obviously, and attorneys general would still have political beliefs. Nobody expected them to become monks. But there was supposed to be a line between overseeing federal prosecutions and joining the partisan show.
Merrick Garland made that line considerably brighter in 2022 when he prohibited DOJ political appointees from attending partisan political events even in their personal capacities. No campaign rallies, no fundraisers, no Election Day exceptions. The idea wasn’t complicated: if you’re wielding the enormous prosecutorial power of the federal government, perhaps you shouldn’t spend Saturday night helping your political team win an election. (CBS News)
Then Pam Bondi became attorney general.
In March, Bondi rescinded Garland’s policy. Political appointees could once again attend partisan events in their personal capacities, subject to the Hatch Act and departmental ethics review. So when Todd Blanche stands on a Republican campaign stage, and the Justice Department tells us its ethics officials approved the appearance, there’s an important piece of context attached to that defense.
They changed the rules.
And that’s the part worth paying attention to.
“PERSONAL CAPACITY” IS DOING A LOT OF WORK HERE
There are government jobs where appearing at a political rally in your personal capacity makes perfect sense. Nobody sees a deputy assistant secretary from an obscure federal office sitting in the third row at a campaign event and assumes the entire federal government has endorsed the candidate.
The attorney general is different. When Todd Blanche walks onto that stage, he doesn’t magically stop being attorney general because somebody checked the “personal capacity” box beforehand. The crowd knows who he is, the candidate knows who he is, and the television cameras certainly know who he is.
That’s why former DOJ ethics officials and legal experts quoted in recent reporting have questioned whether the distinction works for somebody occupying one of the most powerful law-enforcement positions in America. Cynthia Shaw, who ran DOJ’s ethics office during Trump’s first term, made the problem pretty clear: the bigger the government job, the less meaningful the claim of personal capacity becomes. (The New York Times)
Blanche’s defenders also have a legitimate legal argument. The Hatch Act doesn’t prohibit every political activity by every federal official, and there is disagreement about precisely how its stricter provisions apply to the attorney general. NYU legal-ethics professor Stephen Gillers told The New York Times that Blanche’s political activity is protected by the First Amendment and doesn’t violate professional-conduct rules, even though Gillers considers Blanche’s choice to engage in it ill-advised. (The New York Times)
That’s an important distinction because this isn’t a clean story about an attorney general obviously breaking a law. It’s a story about what happens when “Is this technically prohibited?” replaces “Should the Justice Department be doing this?”
Those are very different standards.
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THIS IS BIGGER THAN ONE RALLY
Blanche’s Wednesday appearance matters because of the institution he represents. The Justice Department can subpoena you, investigate you, search your home, seize your property, and convene a grand jury to ask for your indictment. It can put the entire machinery of the federal government behind a criminal prosecution.
That kind of power requires public trust, and maintaining that trust gets considerably harder when the person controlling the machinery is appearing at campaign rallies for one political party.
Blanche has already rejected the traditional formulation that DOJ should be independent of the White House. In an August interview, he said he wouldn’t pledge independence and defended considering the president’s views when directing federal law enforcement. He has separately told the Associated Press that his commitment to integrity and the rule of law hasn’t changed. (The Washington Post) (Associated Press)
Those statements now have to coexist with the pictures: the attorney general on a campaign stage while the president asks voters to elect Republicans and the Republican Senate candidate stands nearby.
We’re supposed to believe the words “personal capacity” make the institutional implications disappear.
They don’t.
THE RULES AREN’T THE SAME THING AS THE STANDARD
This is where Washington has gotten very good at bullshitting itself. Someone asks whether an action is appropriate, and the answer comes back that lawyers reviewed it.
Those aren’t the same question.
Ethics rules establish the minimum conduct government officials are permitted to engage in. Institutional standards are supposed to protect something much harder to rebuild once it’s gone: credibility.
Garland’s policy recognized that problem. It didn’t require proving that an attorney general had improperly influenced a prosecution before anyone became concerned. It tried to prevent the appearance of partisan law enforcement before that question ever had to be asked.
Bondi removed that safeguard, and Blanche is now demonstrating exactly why it existed.
Maybe every prosecution brought under his leadership will be perfectly legitimate. Maybe every investigation will be supported entirely by evidence. Maybe Blanche will never once allow partisan considerations to affect a prosecutorial decision.
The public shouldn’t have to wonder.
That’s what the firewall was for.
Once the attorney general starts showing up at campaign rallies, the question isn’t merely whether Todd Blanche crossed a legal line Wednesday night. It’s why the line keeps getting moved.
THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR
Three claims. Three trips through the machine.
THE CLAIM:
James Talarico said God is nonbinary, God isn’t Christian, and made a string of other inflammatory religious statements presented in a Ken Paxton campaign ad.
Bullshit.
Some of the words are real. The presentation isn’t.
Paxton’s Senate campaign used an AI-generated version of Democratic opponent James Talarico to deliver remarks Talarico made at different times and in different contexts, while also putting phrases into the artificial version’s mouth that Talarico didn’t say that way. FactCheck.org found the ad stitched together years of remarks about Christianity, Christian nationalism, gender, and religion while stripping away context that substantially changes what Talarico was saying.
Political campaigns have been taking opponents out of context forever. Apparently artificial intelligence has now made it possible to have the opponent personally deliver the bullshit for you. (FactCheck.org)
THE CLAIM:
Trump’s tariffs have cost every Michigan household $5,619.
Bullshit.
Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed posted that number while attacking Trump’s tariffs, but the research behind it doesn’t establish that every Michigan family has actually paid an extra $5,619.
The figure combines estimates of broader economic effects and distributes them across households as though somebody mailed every family the same tariff bill. PolitiFact rated the claim Mostly False.
Tariffs have costs. If you want to argue about those costs, there’s plenty of legitimate evidence available. Turning an economic estimate into an imaginary $5,619 receipt sitting on every kitchen table isn’t it. (PolitiFact)
THE CLAIM:
Mike Collins “voted to gut Social Security” and wants to push older Americans off Social Security and back to work.
Bullshit.
That comes from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s campaign in Georgia, and the scary part of the ad depends on chopping up what Collins actually said.
During a 2025 radio interview, Collins was talking about taxes, government spending, and getting more people into the workforce when he referred to making it advantageous for people to “get off of Medicaid, get off of Social Security, get back into the workforce.” Ossoff’s ad pulled out the Social Security portion and paired it with images of older Americans, making it sound as though Collins was telling retirees to surrender their earned retirement benefits and get a job.
Collins has supported measures that experts say could eventually affect some Social Security benefits. That’s fair game. Making him appear to tell Grandma to clock back in because you found a convenient seven-second sound bite is something else. (PolitiFact)
WANT YOUR OWN BULLSHIT DETECTOR?
The daily Detector catches a few claims at a time. The Bullshit Detector gives you the tools to do it yourself.
Spot the tricks, check the evidence, and figure out when somebody is trying to sell you a steaming pile before you buy it.
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
Should the attorney general stay away from campaign rallies even when the law allows him to attend?
I’m interested in where you draw the line.
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