Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, was confirmed this morning as the new Attorney General of the United States, a move that further calls into question the alleged independence of the Department of Justice. The official has held the position on an interim basis until now, following the dismissal in April of his predecessor, Pam Bondi, after a controversial handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s files and several failed attempts to convict Trump’s political opponents.
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The Senate narrowly confirmed Blanche’s nomination, with a vote of 50 to 49 senators, with all Democrats and two Republican senators, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), voting against. After weeks of uncertainty and intense debate within the Republican Party, the lawyer managed to convince enough wary senators that he would not use the department to achieve Trump’s political goals.
Blanche secured enough Republican votes after offering “guarantees” that he would withdraw the $1.8 billion fund for Trump’s allies
One of the major obstacles on the path to his nomination was the controversial agreement Blanche personally negotiated this year following Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Treasury. The president sued his own government because one of his tax returns had been leaked and, to close the lawsuit, he agreed to a deal granting tax immunity to Trump and his family, allowing the president, his children, and his company never to face tax audits again.
Additionally, the agreement allowed the creation of a federal fund of $1.8 billion to be distributed among the president’s allies. Specifically, those who claim to have been victims of government persecution during Joe Biden’s administration, including those accused in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack. This is an unprecedented partisan distribution of public money in the country’s history, which has been blocked by the judiciary.
To silence objections from Republicans concerned about the lack of independence of the Department of Justice, Blanche provided written guarantees that the fund had been discarded and that immunity for the president would be limited. This allowed Senators John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina), members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to vote last week in favor of bringing Blanche’s nomination to the floor.
After this essential procedure, the Senate finally confirmed him in the position this Saturday thanks to a change of stance by another senator, Bill Cassidy, who lost his re-election bid in the Republican primaries this year to a Trump-backed rival. Since then, he has been more openly critical of the president but ultimately decided that confirming his lawyer for the country’s top judicial post does not constitute a conflict of interest.
“This is not a referendum on Trump,” he justified: “The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche, but between him and another interim attorney general, who might not effectively lead the Department under President Trump.”
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However, the two Republican senators who voted against have a very different opinion. “Blanche approved an order to protect the president, his children, and the family business from IRS audits, protections not available to other American taxpayers,” Collins denounced in a statement, emphasizing that the supposed guarantees offered by Blanche are insufficient, as he was the one who negotiated the controversial agreement and nothing will prevent him from making similar decisions in the future.
The Senate Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, criticized Blanche’s confirmation on social media and promised that “Senate Democrats will continue to fight against the Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law and its undermining of democratic values.”
For her part, Murkowski, the other dissenting Republican, noted that she was “fully aware that the Department’s discretionary spending fund, nearly $2 billion — which probably would have rewarded the January 6 protesters — is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage. Once we vote, that will end, and no one knows what the future holds.”
She added that “the country needs an attorney general who will curb the worst impulses of this administration,” something she believes cannot be done by someone who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his three main criminal cases: falsification of business records in the Stormy Daniels case, mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence, and the attempt to overturn the 2020 elections.
Of all these cases, Trump was only convicted in the secret payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, with which he bought her silence in 2016 about an extramarital affair they had ten years earlier. That conviction, for 34 counts of document falsification, made him the first president convicted of criminal offenses in history. However, his victory in the 2024 elections allowed him to be freed from any penalty or fine in this case, and the charges in the others were dropped.
Since entering the Department of Justice thanks to his resume as Trump’s lawyer – first as deputy attorney general and then as interim attorney general – Blanche’s role has shifted from defending the Republican to attacking his political opponents. During this period, the U.S. has filed charges against former FBI director James Comey twice, and against New York Attorney General Letitia James; and has initiated criminal investigations against former Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, as well as Democratic senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, among others on the long list of the president’s enemies.
