The Senate voted mostly along party lines 50-49 to confirm Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general, capping off weeks of intense talks regarding his leadership capacity and delay in promising to kill President Donald Trump’s controversial IRS settlement deal provisions.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joined Democrats early Saturday morning to vote against his confirmation. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) was still absent following his release from a rehabilitation facility earlier in the week.
Blanche took over as acting attorney general after the president ousted Pam Bondi in April. But his full promotion to the country’s top law enforcement post was dubious after Republican holdouts took issue with the IRS’s settlement with Trump that gave him and certain family members immunity from tax audits and created a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that could pay out those who felt they had been wronged by the federal government, including Jan. 6 riot participants.
Blanche’s critics grilled him over the course of his confirmation process for his handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and whether he’d remain an enforcer of Trump’s agenda, which has included attempted indictments of the president’s opponents. During a closed-door House Oversight interview in May, Bondi blamed Blanche for mismanaging the investigation into Epstein.
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Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) initially took issue with the IRS settlement provisions, threatening to block Blanche from advancing out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unless he delivered written assurances to quell their concerns.
Their impasse broke once Blanche complied with Cornyn and Tillis’ demands to nix the fund and limit the immunity’s deal scope, though the document’s enforceability is still in question, as is whether he will uphold it now that he has been confirmed.
Trump, who once employed Blanche as his personal lawyer, repeatedly suggested throughout the senators’ blockade that he would pull the nomination and leave Blanche as acting attorney general if he did not have enough votes, or wait until Tillis and Cornyn exited Congress next year.
Collins and Murkowski said they would vote against him in statements. The deciding factor came down to outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R–Louisiana), who defended Blanche in a floor speech hours before the chamber was set to vote.
“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this.” Cassidy said Friday. “But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump.”
In addition to ongoing litigation involving the Epstein files and the IRS settlement, the Justice Department is still contending with midterm election security and recent changes within its civil rights division, among other issues.
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