In a nail-biter of a vote on the 8th, the U.S. Senate just barely pushed through the confirmation of President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, as Attorney General. The 50-to-49 tally really tells you how contentious this pick really was.
Todd Blanche in a file photo. Image: HA Viewpoint
NBC reported on the 9th that Blanche had been serving as acting Attorney General since April, and his path to permanency has been anything but smooth over the last few weeks. The vote breakdown showed every single Democrat saying no, while the GOP itself was split — Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska both crossed the aisle to vote against him.
According to the Associated Press, Blanche is a former federal prosecutor for New York who made a name for himself as Trump’s personal attorney and the leader of his legal team. He got his hands dirty in a whole slew of Trump’s lawsuits, including the hush-money case, plus two federal criminal indictments brought against Trump during the Biden administration. He’s said those experiences gave him a front-row seat to how the federal government can “weaponize” the justice system against Trump. He joined the Justice Department in 2025, serving as deputy under then-Attorney General Bondi, where he handled day-to-day operations and also took on some seriously hot-button public issues, like the release of the Epstein files.
Supporters argue Blanche’s background as a prosecutor and his time defending Trump make him a better fit for the White House’s needs than Bondi ever was. Critics, though, worry that now that he’s got the permanent gig, he’ll just push the administration’s agenda even harder. The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, called backing Blanche a “serious mistake” and urged his colleagues not to end up “on the wrong side of history.”
NBC also quoted former federal prosecutor Levinson, who highlighted the biggest concern: with all that power and very few checks, will Blanche go on a revenge spree? During his time as acting AG, he not only sped up investigations into Trump’s political foes but also launched a highly controversial “anti-weaponization” fund — a plan to hand out a whopping $1.8 billion to people who claim they were treated unfairly by the justice system, including some of the January 6 Capitol rioters. That move nearly tanked his nomination. The New York Times reports that Blanche finally put it in writing that he’d formally scrap the plan, which is what got him back just enough votes to squeak by.
