WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general of the United States early Saturday in a 50-49 vote, the narrowest possible margin and one that required a written promise from Blanche before a single Republican who had wavered could bring himself to vote yes.
Blanche is Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney, the lawyer who sat beside him in a Manhattan courtroom during his hush money trial and defended him against federal charges brought under the Biden administration. That background is now the official qualification for leading the agency that prosecutes federal crimes in the United States.
Two Republican senators voted against him. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both said no. Murkowski said publicly that the country needs an attorney general who will “check the worst impulses of this administration,” according to PBS NewsHour. Collins did not elaborate at length. Their combined opposition, together with unified Democratic opposition, meant that Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana became the deciding vote, and that Cassidy extracted a written commitment from Blanche as the price of casting it.
The commitment involved a fund. The Trump administration had proposed a $1.8 billion settlement creating a compensation mechanism for individuals with legal claims against the federal government, including participants in the January 6 Capitol riot, combined with language shielding Trump and family members from IRS audits. Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina spent weeks blocking confirmation over it. Blanche formally terminated the Anti-Weaponization Fund earlier this week to clear the path to his own confirmation, and Cassidy required the termination in writing before he would vote yes. Cassidy described his vote as “a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances,” a formulation designed to insulate himself from what the confirmation means more broadly.
Whether that written commitment functions as a binding constraint is a different question. The fund was a Trump administration creation. There is no obvious legal mechanism preventing a future version from appearing under a different name, with different legal architecture, after the confirmation fight is complete.
The confirmation capped months of procedural difficulty. Blanche had been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s departure in April, running the department in an acting capacity while his permanent nomination moved through the Senate Judiciary Committee and a series of delays tied to the Epstein files standoff and Republican negotiations over the fund. During those months, the department moved to indict former FBI Director James Comey. The charge arose from a social media post in which Comey shared an image of seashells arranged to form “86 47,” a combination prosecutors interpreted as a coded call to harm the president, according to Al Jazeera. Comey’s legal team is seeking dismissal, accusing prosecutors of misleading judges and submitting false statements.
What the department looks like under Blanche’s permanent authority is partly visible in what it did under his acting authority. The denaturalization campaign he championed filed 25 cases in a single day in what officials called the largest coordinated effort in department history. Thousands of career employees left through firings and departures. The Epstein documents remain partially withheld, despite a federal judge privately examining whether the redactions protect victims or serve other purposes. A CIA task force on Cuba was established this week, applying new pressure on Havana. All of that happened while Blanche held the title of acting. He is now confirmed.
Saturday morning had an almost circular quality. A few hours before the Senate vote, Blanche was in Cali, Colombia, standing at a military base representing the United States at the inauguration of Abelardo De la Espriella, the hemisphere’s newest right-wing president and a figure Trump had specifically endorsed. De la Espriella pledged to restore aerial coca fumigation, expand intelligence-sharing with Washington, and bring Colombia back into full alignment with the Trump administration’s security agenda. By mid-afternoon, Blanche had a permanent title.
Murkowski’s objection is worth sitting with. She did not say that Blanche would be a competent attorney general who might occasionally push back against the executive branch. She said the country needs an attorney general who will check the administration’s worst impulses, and voted against him. That is not a description of what she expects to happen. It is a description of what she thinks will not.
The Comey indictment is the clearest demonstration of the direction Blanche’s department has taken. Prosecuting a former FBI director for a social media post that prosecutors claim is a veiled threat against the president marks a sharp departure from how federal charging decisions have historically been made. Whether the case holds up in court is a separate question from what its initiation signals about how the department will use its discretion under the newly confirmed leadership.
The 50-49 vote leaves the department with a leader confirmed at the narrowest possible margin and a Republican caucus in which two members went on the record calling the confirmation a mistake. That mathematics is not the same as a check. A 50-49 vote still confirms. But it does not confirm with ease, and it does not confirm with confidence. It confirms with a written promise extracted by a deciding senator who described the decision as being about a specific man in specific circumstances, not about the broader shape of the administration’s plans for the department he now leads.
Blanche spent two years arguing in courtrooms that Donald Trump was wrongly targeted by federal prosecutors. He will now decide who gets targeted next.
