RSS Amplifier

The Fractured Line by Nicholas J Orcutt · Aug 18, 2026

Todd Blanche: Proof That Trump Has No Fucking Idea What “Merit” Means

0
Sign in to vote or save

The Fractured Line · The Fractured Line by Nicholas J Orcutt

Every essay at The Fractured Line is free and always will be. Locking truth behind a paywall is how power wins.

Paid subscribers aren’t buying access. They’re funding the hours of research that keep the receipts coming. $6 a month keeps the lights on. $60 a year does the same and saves you some money. Founding members become the foundation on which we grow.

I watched the Todd Blanche confirmation hearings and because of it I had to actually look up a very specific term. It is a term that is thrown around by Adolf Shitler all the time, and it is what his administration claimed they were going to make the most important factor.

Meritocracy. The official definition is: Meritocracy is a system where people get power, jobs, or rewards based on their own talent and hard work, not because of family money or social class. The goal is a fair setup where skill matters most.

The work that is done is supposed to be excellent and be the peak of their profession. They are supposed to represent the ultimate worker. The ultimate in whatever their field is. There is supposed to be no special treatment for diversity, equity, or inclusion. This isn’t supposed to be getting a job because you know someone or because of your skin color or what’s between your legs or your partner’s.

“Our country is going to be based on merit again.” That was the direct promise from the tangerine tyrant when he signed the order Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy. He made it clear that he would only let those who have proven themselves time and again be the best of the best.

Which makes me seriously ask the question, why Todd Blanche?

To be clear, I absolutely loathe the pedophile in the Oval Office and everything he stands for. I don’t hide that. I can’t. I’m not impartial at all, and I can acknowledge that. That doesn’t mean that I would fabricate facts and lie about things in order to make my opinion valid.

If anything, I do everything in my power to prove that my opinions are wrong and incorrect. I get a strange sense of accomplishment when I can prove myself wrong. It is like I am able to break my own brain and prove that it’s not right.

When Trump appointed Pam Bondi, I hated the decision. I thought the woman was a disgusting human being who had made her name by lying to people. She would promise people the moon and deliver a rock. Yet, she had a law career that made it somewhat make sense to appoint her as the attorney general.

I can’t say that about Todd Blanche. Would you believe me if I told you that if it wasn’t for the fact that Trump had stacked the court and Blanche had someone else argue, he would only have a single win in his entire career?

Seriously.

Imagine if your favorite football team drafted a quarterback that was trained by Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, but every game he ever played was a loss except for one time he got a tie and another time the team won because he let the backup play.

You’d be questioning if your team was being led by a real idiot. Unless you’re a Cowboys fan. Then you would expect this.

I wish I was just shitting on Todd Blanche for the sake of him being Trump’s BFF, but seriously, this dude has been a massive failure his entire career. Almost legendarily so. The only reason he was even in Trump’s orbit isn’t because of his record or his ability, but his willingness to represent the worst humanity could offer.

Here is the thing about this moron, he was never supposed to be a defense lawyer. All of his training and pedigree was to turn him into the top prosecutor he could be. Blanche graduated from Brooklyn Law School. Blanche then worked for Davis Polk as an associate and temporarily clerked for Judge Denny Chin of the District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In 2006 he became an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). He spent eight years working in the violent-crimes division and became co-chief. Now here is the part where I will be completely honest with you. My research on his record ends up like this.

His own professional bio claims he served as counsel in 15 federal jury trials and received the Justice Department’s Director’s Award for Superior Performance as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. As co-chief of the White Plains Division he supervised investigations and prosecutions involving public corruption, securities fraud, bank and wire fraud, Medicare and federal program fraud, RICO, and violent crime. He oversaw roughly two dozen prosecutors handling homicides, kidnappings, and gang violence.

What I can’t find is actually the part that makes me hesitate to talk about any of his time in the SDNY. His official DOJ bio names no cases. The America First nomination bio names no cases. The letter of support from former U.S. Attorneys and senior DOJ officials describes his work only in categories: public corruption, fraud, RICO. Britannica names no cases.

There isn’t a single place that talks about the cases themselves. It feels less like a workload of victories and more like that nerdy kid in high school telling you he lost his virginity to a girl that lives in Canada. Sure, he could be telling the truth, but we all know he secretly spent the entire summer in the basement trying to figure out how to breakdance while his mom cheered him on.

It’s also worth noting that the SDNY is a workhorse of a department as far as law goes, but it is also worth noting that federal defendants plead guilty in 90% of cases against them. Typically, by the time a case is in front of the SDNY, law enforcement has ensured that they have every single piece of evidence possible.

In 2014, Blanche left the SDNY and went into private practice. He joined Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as a partner in 2017. By June 2019, Blanche had begun representing the political operative Paul Manafort after he was indicted on state mortgage fraud charges in New York. This is the one time that Blanche can consider his defense work as a win.

Not because he proved his client was innocent. Not because he proved his client was being wronged by a system. Not because the one-armed man really did the crime and his client was a patsy being chased by Tommy Lee Jones.

He got the case dismissed because he was able to prove it was a double-jeopardy case.

That is where I discovered what Todd Blanche does as a legal strategy every single time he is defending a client. He doesn’t try to prove their innocence or that they are being wrongfully accused. He doesn’t try to exonerate them of guilt. Instead he makes it a point to try to litigate the ability to question their guilt.

His other named clients were Igor Fruman, a Giuliani associate, and Boris Epshteyn. Fruman pleaded guilty in 2021 in a campaign finance case. That’s a plea, not a win. Beyond that, corporate clients in finance, tech, and healthcare, handling regulatory inquiries and internal investigations.

That means that he started to advise companies how to avoid litigation, not a win or lose case. In fact, in all of my research and everything I hunted down, I couldn’t find a single recorded time of a defense jury verdict in his favor.

In fact, while doing my research, I actually figured out the reason why Mango Mussolini even hired him. It wasn’t because he was a good lawyer, it was because he was an excellent gatekeeper. Everything in his career is built on making sure that people were never able to ask the questions that needed to be asked.

In fact, the only time that he had a case go in front of 12 people to decide the results of a case, he lost 34-0. He couldn’t even convince a single person in the jury to question the guilt. He was so inept at proving innocence that he can be claimed as the main reason I can say that Trump was convicted of rape and I’m not slandering him.

Consider this.

Trump ran his election on the promise that he would release the Epstein files. He made it clear that on day one he would have his AG make all the files public, including the “client” list that was supposedly in there.

Trump knew damn well that if he made everything public, people would know for a fact that he was mentioned in the files more times than Harry Potter is mentioned in all the Harry Potter books. Much like those books, Trump was invested in being “he who shall not be named” and needed to make sure he could keep his promise while also saving himself.

He needed someone who would be able to manipulate the system in a way that ensured that even if they broke the rules, it could be justified in a way that would make Trump seem innocent. He needed someone willing to accept that Trump was a monster pedophile and still be willing to do whatever he could to make him happy.

Enter Todd Blanche.

He flew to Florida in 2025 to interview Ghislaine Maxwell twice, granting her limited immunity for the sessions. That isn’t something the AG does. That isn’t something the Deputy AG does.

Then came the one time he was supposed to defend America. He had one single chance to show the American people that he is worthy of being the top lawyer in the land. It should have been an easy slam-dunk case. It was Trump vs the United States for “leaking” his tax returns. Trump said he would drop the charges against himself if the Justice Department would create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to pay people who claim they were victims of lawfare.

That means that Blanche was once again too incompetent to properly defend his client. This time we are the client. Instead, he bent over and said, “Yes daddy, please more.”

Oh, and it wasn’t just the money. Blanche also handed Trump and his family immunity from the IRS for life. Something that he isn’t qualified or legally able to do. He didn’t care, he did it anyway. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who dismissed the underlying lawsuit, ruled Trump sued the IRS for an improper purpose, to get judicial legitimacy for a settlement with no viable basis in law or fact.

She barred the parties from citing it as a legitimate judicial product, issued sanctions against Trump’s attorneys, and forwarded her ruling to the New York Bar Association, of which Blanche is a member.

Oh, as a side fuck-you to the American people, Congress made Blanche terminate the order to create the slush fund, but he kept the order about Trump and his family being given immunity from the IRS.

He actually said with a straight face that Trump could sue for a breach of contract. He pretended like Trump gave a fuck about the slush fund part of the settlement while he was getting immunity from the IRS.

We were promised a meritocracy. We were promised that we would be setting up this country for a better tomorrow and that those in charge would be the best of the best. No more getting special treatment if you didn’t have the record to back it up.

I guess I missed the Trump definition of the word. It isn’t about excellence in your job, it is about excellence in kissing his pedophile ass while prostituting out your own morals. If that is what is truly merit to Trump, then the man who was a Democrat until 2025, Todd Blanche, is the definition of merit.

Stay loud, stay informed, stay dangerous.

-Nicholas J. Orcutt

You just read something power didn’t want written.

No outlet assigned this story. No editor approved a budget for it. It exists because readers fund an independent operation with no paywall, no owner, and no one to answer to but you.

My readers have built this into one of the top politics publications on Substack. Not because of me. Because enough people decided that receipts without a paywall should exist, and put money behind that decision.

Passing through? A one-time tip funds the work with no subscription and no follow-up.

Buy me a coffee

Every essay stays free either way. But understand what free costs. The stories that don’t get funded don’t get told. That silence is the product power is counting on.

Truth dies in silence. Spread the information.

Share

No posts

Read the original on nicholasjorcutt.substack.com

Comments

Nothing yet. Say the first thing.

    Sign in to join the conversation.