Associated Press
Blanche defends handling of Epstein files as he aims to solidify GOP support at confirmation hearing
ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Updated Wed, July 15, 2026 at 4:11 AM PDT 6 min read
WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the Justice Department's handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, telling his confirmation hearing Wednesday that though "mistakes were made," the disclosure of the documents was an exercise in unprecedented transparency.
From 11/7/2006 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, from my official United States of America Veterans Affairs psychiatric-hospital documents, the final appointment with the psychiatrist ) To 7/15/2026 ( ) is 7190 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/10/1985 ( ) is 7190 days
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089530/releaseinfo/
IMDb
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
Release info
United States July 10, 1985
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090022/releaseinfo/
IMDb
Silverado
Release info
United States July 10, 1985
IMDb
Silverado (1985)
Quotes
Jake: All I did was kiss a girl!
Emmett: They got you in jail for that?
Jake: Yeah, I kissed a girl
From 10/28/1955 ( Microsoft Corbis Bill Gates the transvestite and 100% female gender as born to brother-sister genetic-sibling parents ) To 7/15/2026 ( ) is 25828 days
25828 = 12914 + 12914
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 3/12/2001 ( ) is 12914 days
Henry Lee Lucas
From Wikipedia
Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001) was an American convicted serial killer.
He rose to infamy after he confessed to around 600 other murders after his conviction while in prison to the Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and officially attributed the murders to Lucas; he was considered the most prolific serial killer in history.
From 11/26/1986 ( premiere USA film "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" ) To 7/15/2026 ( ) is 14476 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/21/2005 ( ) is 14476 days
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
(from internet transcript)
TEST COMPUTER VOICE: ...Correct. What is the electronic configuration of gadolinium?
TEST COMPUTER VOICE: ...Correct. How do you feel? ...How do you feel?
SPOCK: I do not understand the question.
AMANDA: What is it, Spock?
SPOCK: I do not understand the question, Mother.
AMANDA: You're half human. The computer knows that.
SPOCK: The question is irrelevant.
AMANDA: Spock, ...the retraining of your mind has been in the Vulcan way, so you may not understand feelings. But as my son, you have them. They will surface.
SPOCK: As you wish, since you deem them of value. But I cannot wait here to find them.
AMANDA: Where must you go?
SPOCK: I must go to Earth. To offer testimony.
AMANDA: You do this ...for friendship?
SPOCK: I do it because I was there,
AMANDA: Spock. Does the good of the many outweigh the good of the one?
SPOCK: I would accept that as an axiom.
AMANDA: Then you stand here alive because of a mistake ...made by your flawed, feeling, human friends. They have sacrificed their futures because they believed that the good of the one, ...you, ...was more important to them.
SPOCK: Humans make illogical decisions.
AMANDA: They do, indeed.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
[Mercy Hospital corridor]
POLICEMAN #1: How's the patient, Doctor?
KIRK: He's gonna make it!
POLICEMAN #2: He? He went in with a she.
KIRK: One little mistake.
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 10/15/1999 ( ) is 12400 days
24800 = 12400 + 12400
From 8/21/1958 ( from Wikipedia on the global-internetwork: The decommissioned U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the most decorated U.S. ship of World War II, was towed to a scrapyard after having been anchored at the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn since 1947. A writer for The New York Times wrote, "Naval progress has succeeded in doing what the Japanese could never do. ) To 7/15/2026 ( ) is 24800 days
Stargate SG-1
"Past and Present"
TV-series season 3 episode 11, 10/15/1999
KE'RA
Tell me of Linea.
DANIEL
Well, uh, basically, we met her on a visit to another planet, during which we were imprisoned, unjustly, and Linea helped us escape.
KE'RA
Surely there is nothing wrong with that, if you were imprisoned unjustly.
DANIEL
Well, she was imprisoned justly. It was only after we escaped that we learned this nice, older lady we thought Linea was, was in fact a very, very bad, older lady, who had committed terrible crimes.
KE'RA
What crimes?
DANIEL
She created a plague that almost wiped out an entire people. They called her the Destroyer of Worlds.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/blanche-faces-senate-scrutiny-republican-111141950.html
Yahoo! News
Associated Press
Blanche defends handling of Epstein files as he aims to solidify GOP support at confirmation hearing
ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Updated Wed, July 15, 2026 at 4:11 AM PDT 6 min read
WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the Justice Department's handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, telling his confirmation hearing Wednesday that though "mistakes were made," the disclosure of the documents was an exercise in unprecedented transparency.
"I want to make sure that the American people know that this administration, when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, has been more transparent than any administration," Blanche said as he confronted questions about his brief but turbulent tenure atop the Justice Department. The Senate hearing will test Trump's grip on Republican lawmakers whose support the nominee will need for the job.
Trump's former personal attorney, Blanche has run the department on an interim basis since April, during which time he has accelerated investigations into Trump foes, functioned as the public face of a maligned fund meant to compensate the Republican president's allies and alarmed press freedom advocates with an aggressive pursuit of news media leaks.
Those actions will receive fresh scrutiny at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing as Blanche testifies for the opportunity to serve out the duration of Trump's term. The stakes are high given the upheaval inside the department, where mass firings and resignations have hollowed out the workforce. More than 1,200 department alumni have come out against his nomination.
How might Blanche's confirmation affect Justice Department investigations?
Sen. Dick Durbin, the committee's top Democrat, told Blanche: "In less than 18 months at the Department of Justice, you've shown you're still President Trump's personal attorney. Your tenure can be summed up in the four words you said — 'I love you, sir' — to President Trump." That was a reference to remarks Blanche made at an April news conference.
Blanche, for his part, insisted that he has presided over a course correction at the department following years of investigations into Trump during the Biden administration.
"In recent years, we watched the Justice Department turned against many of you and a former president, and it damaged the public's faith in justice," Blanche argued. "We are fixing that."
Blanche will need the support of each Republican on the panel Blanche, who is expected to be uniformly voted down by Democrats on the committee, must win the support of all Republicans on the panel for his nomination to advance.
A particular focus is on Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who in May lost his primary and has said he won't decide on Blanche's nomination until after the hearing, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has opted not to seek reelection. Tillis has been an outspoken critic of a $1.776 billion fund that the Trump administration created to compensate people who feel unjustly persecuted by the criminal justice system and then quickly withdrew.
Tillis has said he will not support for attorney general anyone who equivocates on the events of Jan 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the congressional certification of Trump's election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The senator, however, recently said he doesn't have any concerns about Blanche's record regarding the events of that day.
With the death of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, there are 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the panel. If even one Republican on the committee votes against Blanche, it could scuttle his nomination.
Questions await about the $1.776 billion fund and the Epstein files
The $1.776 billion fund, called the Anti-Weaponization Fund, created a particularly rocky moment for Blanche. He initially defended it during congressional appearances only to reveal later that it was being scrapped — even while resisting calls to give those reassurances in writing. The turnabout followed fierce bipartisan backlash that came to a head during a tense closed-door meeting he had with lawmakers.
The fund arose out of a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns. The Florida judge overseeing that case issued a scathing ruling that said Trump and his lawyers had manipulated the court system in bringing the lawsuit in the first place. The judge, Kathleen Williams, said Monday she was troubled by Blanche's involvement in the settlement given that he previously represented Trump.
"He's got a few more questions to get through, after the judge's decision today," Cornyn told reporters Monday.
Blanche will also face questioning over a separate element of the settlement that afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits and that, he has said, remains on track despite outrage over it from even Republicans.
Epstein files are also under scrutiny
Other testimony is likely to focus on Blanche's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, especially after his predecessor Pam Bondi told lawmakers behind closed doors after her ouster as attorney general that Blanche was the department's point person on the release of documents from the sex trafficking case into the late financier.
The staggered release, mandated by an act of Congress, was beset by problems, including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims. Some names, email addresses and other identifying information were either unredacted or not fully obscured. About 1 percent of the records had redactions that needed to be fixed, he said.
A former federal prosecutor and key member of Trump's defense team as the Republican battled four indictments between his first and second terms, Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. He then ascended to the top job after Trump ousted Bondi, who had frustrated the White House by struggling to bring successful cases against Trump's political opponents.
Blanche has tried to satisfy the president in that regard. He has appointed a new prosecutor to spearhead a Florida-based investigation centered on former government officials Trump dislikes. The Justice Department under Blanche's watch also secured an indictment of ex-FBI Director James Comey, another adversary of Trump, on charges of threatening the 47th president by posting a social media photograph of seashells in the numerical arrangement of "86 47." Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence.
Blanche has denied accusations that he has been weaponizing the department. But he has also insisted that he sees no problem with the president's interest in Justice Department matters and that he feels no pressure to placate him.
"We have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now," Blanche told a press conference in May. "And it is true that some of them involve men, women and entities that the president in the past has had issues with and believes should be investigated. That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that."
Blanche has also presided over an aggressive enforcement of news media leaks, with prosecutors most recently issuing subpoenas demanding that a group of New York Times journalists testify before a federal grand jury after they reported on security concerns involving the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One. The Times' executive editor, Joseph Kahn, criticized the subpoenas, praised his journalists' work and said: "We expect to prevail."
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 08:50 AM Pacific-timezone USA Wednesday 07/15/2026
