Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, was confirmed as US attorney general on Saturday after Senate Republicans dismissed Democratic concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department.
Blanche, who has already served as the top US law enforcement officer in an acting capacity, previously represented Trump as his private attorney in several criminal trials before joining the government. The Senate, which Republicans narrowly control, confirmed him 50 to 49.
Trump, who has upended US political norms by seeking to bring nominally independent government agencies under his increasingly direct control, calls Blanche a “star.”
Democrats opposed Blanche from the start, accusing Trump of using the Department of Justice as a political tool.
“The attorney general is supposed to be the people’s lawyer,” Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday.
“Mr. Blanche continues to operate as the president’s personal lawyer, treating the Justice Department like a law firm serving one client—the president.”
There were questions about whether the White House could persuade a few Republican holdouts, without whom even a narrow confirmation would have been unthinkable.
The main sticking point was an attempt to establish a $1.8 billion fund for what Trump refers to as “victims of politicized prosecutions,” which most likely included the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempted insurrection to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as president following Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
The other major problem was an extraordinary plan to give Trump immunity from tax audits.
Blanche eventually defused internal party opposition with a written order over the weekend that scrapped the so-called political “anti-weaponization fund” and stated that the audit immunity agreement with Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization would only apply “retroactively” to past tax years and not future filings.
Blanche has been acting attorney general since April, when Trump sacked Pam Bondi, another Republican supporter.
Since then, he has been closely linked to what Democrats call a Trump “retribution” campaign against the 80-year-old president’s critics.
Blanche has also faced criticism from victims of Jeffrey Epstein for his handling of the release of investigative papers on the convicted sex offender, a former close friend of Trump.
Before joining the Department of Justice, Blanche represented Trump in his New York trial over alleged “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
He also served on the legal defense team in two federal charges brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith: one for allegedly mishandling secret papers after leaving the White House and the other for seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Both cases were dismissed when Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
