U.S. Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche shut down Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday over an “obnoxious” question about FBI Director Kash Patel and what Blanche called cherry-picked quotes.
Whitehouse asked Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since April, if he’s had enough of this “Kash Patel character” and relayed several attacks against the director.
“How long do you plan to put up with that Kash Patel character?” Whitehouse asked Blanche. “Are you good with his airplane jaunts, are you confident he’s not drinking on the job, are you sure none of his travel is a pretext for vacation activities like snorkeling, Olympics, and visiting girlfriends, are you sure he knows what he’s doing, do you vouch for him, are you willing to look at whether he lied to this committee?”
“That is an extraordinarily obnoxious question, senator,” Blanche responded. “I have full faith in Director Patel and the work that he’s doing every day.”
Responding to another Democrat later in the hearing, Blanche said Patel does not have a “drinking problem,” nor is there a “morale” problem at the FBI.
.@SenWhitehouse (D-RI) questions Todd Blanch on Kash Patel: “Are you good with his airplane jaunts, are you confident he’s not drinking on the job, are you sure none of his travel is a pretext for vacation activities like snorkeling Olympics and visiting girlfriends…?” pic.twitter.com/UnMVvttPnG
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 15, 2026
Again responding to Whitehouse, Blanche called out the senator for what he called cherry-picked quotes from judges to illustrate an anti-Trump talking point.
“I appreciate the handpicked words that you have behind you right now,” Blanche said, referring to Whitehouse’s poster board with the quotes. “But that’s not reflective of the 100,000 indictments and informations that have been filed to do the work that I talked about earlier today.”
“So, while cherry-picking a few isolated words from district court or magistrate judges in certain districts is something that you’re entitled to do, it’s absolutely false to suggest that this Department of Justice is not executing as we should, and doing the right thing every single day,” the acting attorney general added.
NEW: Acting AG Todd Blanche calls out Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for “cherry picking” comments from judges during his confirmation hearing, rejecting the claim that the Justice Department is failing to do its job:
“I appreciate the handpicked words that you have behind… pic.twitter.com/XDwuKiWuGA
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 15, 2026
Earlier in the hearing, Blanche pushed back against Democratic claims that the Trump administration has not been transparent about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes.
Blanche said the Trump administration had made unredacted versions of the Epstein database available to every member of Congress and stressed the differences in action between this administration and the previous Biden administration. “We made unredacted versions of the entire database available to everybody in this body, and we did that because of transparency,” the nominee said. “Remember, for four years there wasn’t a peep about Jeffrey Epstein. The Biden administration did nothing to be transparent about the Epstein case.”
Related: AG Nominee Todd Blanche Shuts Down Trump-Epstein Claims
