Todd Blanche confirmed as US attorney general

Todd Blanche was confirmed by the US Senate as attorney general after a razor-thin vote, according to The Guardian. Blanche, a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump, cleared the chamber only after Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana cast the deciding vote. Two Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—voted no, while every Democrat opposed the nomination.

The margin mattered because the confirmation fight became a proxy battle over what kind of Justice Department Trump intends to run in a second term. The Guardian reports that Blanche’s nomination was delayed for weeks as Republican senators pressed the department over a proposed deal that would have created a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” while also offering tax immunity for the president, his sons, and his business. Murkowski cited the fund as part of her opposition, while John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina demanded written assurances that the fund would not proceed and sought clarity on the scope of the IRS arrangement; they ultimately backed Blanche after receiving those assurances.

Even before the confirmation vote, Blanche’s tenure inside the department had already produced the kind of operational failures that tend to follow politicised pressure. The Guardian notes that the Justice Department released files related to Jeffrey Epstein with improper redactions, leaving unredacted the names of victims that should have remained private. During his confirmation hearing, Blanche initially refused to meet with Epstein victims before later agreeing; survivors said they received few answers in the meeting.

The personnel churn has been just as telling. Under Blanche’s leadership, many career Justice Department attorneys have left, and department lawyers have been rebuked by judges for misrepresentations to courts, The Guardian reports. The same period has included headline-grabbing cases aimed at figures associated with Trump’s political conflicts, including indictments of former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James, as well as an indictment of the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center.

A Justice Department can be made to look busy in many ways: by opening investigations, by filing charges, by forcing targets to spend money and time responding, and by encouraging staff to anticipate what leadership wants before it is said out loud. The confirmation vote suggests Senate Republicans were less concerned with whether Blanche would use those tools than with whether Congress might be asked to finance a new internal pot of money while tax questions were being pre-negotiated in parallel.

Blanche left a lucrative partnership to represent Trump in 2023. On Friday, the Senate confirmed him as attorney general on Cassidy’s deciding vote.