Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination survived a Senate Judiciary Committee vote after two Republican holdouts struck a last-minute deal, but several GOP senators remain undecided ahead of a floor vote he cannot afford to lose.
The committee advanced Blanche's nomination 12-10 on Tuesday, sending it to the full Senate after weeks of delay caused by opposition within the president's own party. Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had refused to back the nomination until the Justice Department addressed their concerns over a controversial $1.8 billion fund and a sweeping IRS immunity deal that shielded President Trump and his family from audits.
Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer who took over as acting attorney general in April after Trump fired Pam Bondi, needed every Republican on the committee to advance. He got them, but only after formally rescinding the so-called anti-weaponization fund and issuing a written clarification narrowing the scope of the IRS settlement. The concessions arrived late Sunday night, posted on X with two documents: a signed memo killing the fund and an unsigned statement on the IRS terms.
The anti-weaponization fund was a nearly $1.8 billion plan intended to compensate people who believed they were wrongly targeted by the criminal justice system. Critics warned it could benefit Jan. 6 Capitol rioters. Blanche himself admitted the fund was a mistake.
The IRS settlement posed a different problem. It grew out of an IRS contractor's leak of Trump's tax information and included an addendum granting Trump and his family immunity from IRS audits and, as Blanche acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, "possibly any other investigation for matters not even known." Cornyn said after the deal that he believed the terms were now "narrowly defined" and that "it would be very difficult for anybody to construe it as some sort of get out of audit free."
Tillis was blunter about the limits of the arrangement. He acknowledged that Trump could revive the anti-weaponization fund in the future.
As National Review reported, Tillis conceded: "Could they create a new one? Sure, because the law allows it." Sen. Tommy Tuberville was even more direct, predicting Trump would bring the fund back after Blanche is confirmed and the holdout senators leave office. "He'll bring it back," Tuberville said. "He'll get Blanche in, and then, probably after this Congress, anyway, they'll do it."
That candor from Tuberville raises a fair question about whether the concessions Cornyn and Tillis secured amount to a permanent policy change or a temporary maneuver to clear a confirmation vote.
The deal did not come easily. Both Cornyn and Tillis publicly accused a Trump political advisor of sabotaging White House approval for a potential agreement. Cornyn's chief legal counsel engaged in contentious negotiations with Blanche's team for several days before the resolution came together.
On Tuesday, Cornyn struck a conciliatory tone, thanking Blanche and framing the vote as a practical necessity:
"We need a stabilizing force at the Department of Justice, and Mr. Blanche deserves the opportunity to provide that, as opposed to continuing to serve in an acting capacity."
Cornyn lost his primary election in May. Tillis is not seeking reelection. Both men had less political risk in pressing the White House than senators who still depend on Trump's base. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, opening Tuesday's hearing, expressed frustration that the dispute dragged on as long as it did: "It's just a crime that it took so long to work out with such a common sense thing that's pretty simple."
Tillis, for his part, gave conditional support. "I'm going to support Mr. Blanche's nomination," he said, "but what I hope I see out of him is a bending of the curve of this absurdity."
The anti-weaponization fund was not the only obstacle Blanche faced. Tillis had also chastised him over the bungled release of Jeffrey Epstein files, a controversy that contributed to Bondi's downfall before Blanche replaced her. In mid-July, Tillis stated he would not vote for Blanche unless Blanche met with Epstein survivors.
Blanche arranged the meeting on the same day Tillis issued that ultimatum. Tillis then posted on social media that Blanche "is the first Attorney General who has even offered to meet with the victims." The post was quickly edited to replace that sentence with softer language: "I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did."
No explanation was given for the edit. The original claim, that no prior attorney general had even offered to meet with survivors, was a strong assertion. Its quiet removal suggests someone recognized it might not hold up to scrutiny.
Clearing the committee was necessary but not sufficient. CNN reported that the DOJ entered a period of relative silence on controversial political cases during Blanche's confirmation process, even as it continued to press forward on large-scale fraud cases and immigration enforcement. A confirmed attorney general would end that limbo.
But Blanche can only afford to lose two Republican votes on the Senate floor. The Washington Examiner noted the nomination had been in jeopardy for weeks because of the Republican holdouts. And according to Fox News, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, John Curtis, and Bill Cassidy remain undecided.
Blanche has been working to shore up support. He took a two-day trip to Alaska earlier this month, meeting with local and tribal leaders, a visit that coincided with several DOJ actions in the state. The department agreed to an $180 million settlement with Anchorage over unfinished work on the port of Alaska, dropped two Biden-era lawsuits related to Alaska's oil and gas production, dropped a $400 million settlement with a group providing healthcare services to American Indians and Alaska Natives, and awarded $6.1 million in grants to local law enforcement, tribal governments, and nonprofits to combat crime.
The Alaska trip was a clear effort to court Murkowski. Whether it worked remains to be seen.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, dismissed the concessions as meaningless. "Cornyn and Tillis seem to have gotten nothing meaningful," Blumenthal said. "The tax immunity deal is still unlimited, in terms of past potential liability. And the slush fund is still alive and well, so far as Donald Trump is concerned."
That framing overstates the case, the fund was formally rescinded by a signed DOJ memo, and the IRS terms were narrowed in writing. But Blumenthal's core objection tracks with Tuberville's own prediction: that the concessions are temporary because the underlying legal authority to recreate the fund remains intact.
Republicans delayed the committee vote once already, out of fear Blanche would fail to win enough support. The 12-10 result on Tuesday, a strict party-line outcome, confirms how thin the margin was. No Republican could afford to break ranks, and none did.
Since taking over in April, Blanche has pursued criminal actions against people and organizations the president has criticized. He accelerated scrutiny into the government's response to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He launched and then discontinued the anti-weaponization fund. He oversaw the IRS immunity settlement. At his confirmation hearing, he acknowledged "mistakes were made" regarding the Epstein files.
A full confirmation would remove the "acting" label and give Blanche a freer hand to press forward on politically sensitive investigations, including cases tied to longstanding accusations of voter fraud ahead of upcoming midterm elections. The DOJ's period of relative quiet on those fronts would likely end.
AP News reported that the same day the committee voted, a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration's termination of a multi-billion-dollar clean energy program, a reminder that the DOJ faces legal challenges on multiple fronts, not just confirmation politics.
The Justice Department needs a confirmed leader, not a caretaker. Whether Todd Blanche can hold two more Republican votes on the Senate floor will determine whether the department gets one, or keeps drifting.
