The United States Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general in a 50–49 vote in the early hours of Saturday, 8 August 2026, concluding weeks of fractious negotiations that at several points threatened to sink his nomination entirely.
Blanche, who served as President Donald Trump's personal defence lawyer before taking over from Pam Bondi as acting attorney general in April, becomes the second confirmed attorney general of Trump's second term. ABC7 News reported that every Senate Democrat voted against his confirmation.
Two Republicans also broke with their party: Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Their opposition left the margin at its narrowest possible point. Senator Mitch McConnell, who has been absent from the chamber this summer while recovering from a fall, was not present for the final vote, further reducing the Republican majority's room for error throughout the process.
The deciding vote came from Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. CNBC reported that Cassidy announced on Friday he had concluded Blanche was the best option Trump would put forward, and voted accordingly.
The confirmation battle had been shaped, above all, by concerns about the independence of the Department of Justice and by Blanche's unusual background as the president's own defence counsel. Critics argued that his prior relationship with Trump created an irreconcilable conflict of interest for the country's senior law-enforcement official. Those concerns were sharpened by a separate controversy: a settlement of Trump's Internal Revenue Service lawsuit over leaked tax returns, which contained a proposed $1.8 billion anti-weaponisation compensation fund. The fund, which could have been used to pay allies of the president prosecuted for political purposes, drew alarm across party lines.
That provision nearly proved fatal to the nomination at committee stage. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche's nomination on 4 August by a 12–10 party-line vote, but only after he provided written assurances to two Republican holdouts. According to the Associated Press, Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina secured written pledges from Blanche to eliminate the $1.8 billion fund entirely.
Blanche also pledged in writing to limit the scope of the tax-immunity provisions associated with the IRS settlement. The New York Times reported that he committed to constraining the broad tax immunity the settlement had been read to confer on Trump and his family. Reuters reported that his written assurances stated the deal applied only to past tax returns, a constraint intended to prevent broader immunity from being read into the settlement. The full terms of the underlying IRS lawsuit settlement remain unclear beyond what those written assurances addressed.
The written pledges were sufficient to move the nomination out of committee, but they did not resolve the reservations of Collins and Murkowski, both of whom maintained their opposition and voted against confirmation on Saturday. In the event, Cassidy's support proved sufficient to carry the nomination over the line.
What Blanche will now prioritise at the Justice Department, and how he will navigate the institutional independence questions that defined his confirmation, remain to be seen.
Comments (0)