Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday said the Trump administration would not be slowed in its efforts to oversee the midterm elections by a Supreme Court decision blocking an unprecedented mail ballot rule.

During a press briefing in the Rose Garden, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney defended his former client-turned-boss who blasted Supreme Court justices he nominated but who may have broken with him on the U.S. Postal Service rule. 

Blanche also waded into political waters — something some previous attorneys general have tried to avoid — by accusing Democrats of raising alarms about artificial intelligence in a bid to score points with voters before Election Day.

“The Supreme Court’s decision … doesn’t affect ongoing criminal investigations into illegal voting,” Blanche said. “There should be nothing surprising about what we’re trying to do when it comes to mail-in voting, which is we want to make sure that there is safe voting and that there is integrity — free and fair elections, and that there is one person placing one vote, and that that person is eligible to vote.

“President Trump’s efforts to make sure that we have free and fair elections are not going to stop just in November or after or thereafter. So I expect we’ll see that work continue,” the country’s top lawyer said.

Blanche also tried to dismiss any notion that the Trump administration plans to inject itself in an election any more than previous administrations.

“The federal government is always involved in elections. That’s not new to this administration. That’s not new to the Biden administration. And so, our role is going to be the same role that federal governments play in elections under the law, as we’re required to do and as we should do,” he said. “So, we’re going to continue to do that in this election.”

Blanche sparred with reporters a day after the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s U.S. Postal Service rule restricting election mail.

Before Blanche stepped out into the sun-drenched and concrete-covered Rose Garden, Trump blasted — without directly naming them — three high-court jurists he nominated to the court for blocking the rule. That would be Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” Trump wrote on social media.

Kavanaugh joined the majority in blocking the administration’s effort to give the Postal Service the authority to impose new nationwide rules on mail ballots. Gorsuch and Barrett did not weigh in publicly either way on the unsigned majority opinion, but Trump appeared to assume all three voted against him. Conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas signed on to a dissent.

‘Highly political’

In his social media post, Trump referred to those veteran justices as “legends both,” writing that they “strongly disagreed with this horrible, highly political, ruling.”

Blanche defended his boss, saying he had the right as president and head of the executive branch to criticize another arm of the federal government.

“A democracy is about three branches of government,” he said. “We very much disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision. That should be obvious from our papers and from what we’ve said publicly about the case. And so I am also upset about the Supreme Court decision. But the idea that President Trump shouldn’t be allowed to communicate to the American people his frustration, I don’t share that.”

After a brief political firestorm swept across Washington after several executives of leading artificial intelligence firms called for development to slow and Congress to legislate safety guardrails, Blanche said Democrats poured lighter fluid on the matter to help them in the midterms.

“Every Democrat senator suddenly races to a microphone to talk about AI after being eerily silent for months and months and months. So to talk about the timing of this as being nothing but an effort to to influence the midterms, I shouldn’t have to say that out loud,” he said. “That’s what it is. And that shouldn’t be what drives the decisions that we’re making around AI.”

The attorney general said Justice Department officials would focus on crimes involving the technology, not how the industry should be monitored by the federal government.

“We’re prosecutors, not regulators. So we’re not going to try to regulate AI,” he said. “AI is extraordinarily beneficial to our society. There’s a lot of great work that AI does, and it’s also something that conveniently has become a flashpoint this week.”

Blanche was the second Cabinet official to conduct a White House briefing since former press secretary Karoline Leavitt departed late last month. Vice President JD Vance went first, though he took questions inside the air-conditioned James S. Brady Briefing Room.

“I notice you guys are sweating, which is nice,” Blanche said with a smile. “I love to see that.”