The US Senate voted to narrowly confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general in a big win for president Donald Trump, who will now have his one-time personal attorney sitting atop the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote in Blanche’s favour after two other Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – voted against him. Every Democrat rejected Blanche’s nomination as the Republican-led Senate voted 50-49.
Blanche had already been leading the department in an acting capacity and the vote came after his nomination had been in limbo for weeks. He faced pushback from Republican senators over the department’s deal to create a $1.8 billion so-called “anti-weaponisation fund” and to give the president, his sons and his businesses tax immunity.
“Mr Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this, but the choice is not between perfection and Mr Blanche,” Cassidy said Friday on the senate floor announcing his decision.
RM Block
“It is between Mr Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under president Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr Blanche.”
The senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said senate Republicans have “handed Trump an excuse on a silver platter” to continue his “pervasive, breathtaking corruption” by confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general.
“If you want to wipe out corruption, you can’t have the president’s personal attorney as the attorney general. You don’t need a PhD in political science to know that,” he wrote in a post on X.
“Todd Blanche has no intention of stopping Trump’s corruption. He advanced his career enabling it. Every senator who voted to confirm him has now branded themselves as an enabler, too.”
Blanche said on social media that he was “deeply honored by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me”, adding that he was “grateful” to senators for working late to confirm him.
Concern around the “anti-weaponisation fund” appears to have cost Blanche among at least some GOP senators who opposed his nomination, including Murkowski.
But John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina successfully pushed Blanche to put in writing that the fund was not moving forward and to clarify the scope of the IRS deal. Even though experts said the assurances were far from ironclad, Cornyn and Tillis wound up supporting Blanche, allowing his nomination to narrowly clear the Senate judiciary committee.
Blanche also faced heavy criticism for the department’s sloppy roll-out of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which redacted information that should not have been redacted and left unredacted the names of victims that should have been kept private.
During his confirmation hearing, Blanche refused to personally meet with Epstein victims, then agreed to do so. The survivors said they received few answers from Blanche during the meeting.
Blanche, who left a lucrative partnership to represent Trump in 2023, has been at the centre of the president’s attempt to bend the federal government to his will. Scores of career justice department attorneys have left the agency under his leadership. Department lawyers have been rebuked by judges across the US for making misrepresentations to the court.
Blanche has also been at the centre of Trump’s efforts to use the justice department to punish political rivals.
During his tenure as both the deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, the department has indicted former FBI director James Comey twice; the New York attorney general, Letitia James; and the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center.
It has also tried to bring criminal charges against two Democratic senators, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and used its investigative powers to try to get leverage over Jerome Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Earlier this year, Blanche spoke about how he would feel if someone else was named attorney general.
“As to whether or not I want this job, I did not ask for this job. I love working for President Trump, it’s the greatest honour of a lifetime,” he said in April, shortly after being named the acting attorney general.
“If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.” – The Guardian
