The Senate Confirmed Todd Blanche 50-49 at 4:31 A.M., Then Left Town for Five Weeks

Todd Blanche was confirmed as attorney general at 4:31 a.m. Saturday by a vote of 50 to 49, closing out a nomination fight that came within one Republican of collapsing and clearing the Senate's decks minutes before senators scattered for a five-week recess.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans to vote no. Every Democrat opposed him. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has not appeared in the chamber since a fall in June, did not vote — an absence that quietly widened the margin President Trump needed. Blanche is the second confirmed attorney general of Trump's second term.

The nomination turned on money, not on Blanche's resume. For months he was tied to a proposed "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that would have paid out $1.8 billion to people the administration described as victims of politicized prosecution, a pool that would have covered participants in the Jan. 6 riot. A companion arrangement contemplated shielding Trump and his family from tax audits. Republican senators including John Cornyn and Thom Tillis blocked the nomination over it. Blanche eventually rescinded both provisions in writing.

That concession was what moved the last undecided vote. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana announced from the floor on Friday that he would support Blanche, ending speculation that he would become the third GOP defection and sink the nomination outright. Democrats argued the written promises were worth little once Blanche held the office. "If there is ever a moment in history when we need an Attorney General above reproach," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said, "it's right now."

Blanche's path to the job is without recent precedent. He was a federal prosecutor in New York before moving to a large Wall Street firm, which he left in 2023 to become Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer. He helped lead the defense in the New York hush-money trial that ended in Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts, and in the federal classified-documents prosecution that was later dismissed. He took over the Justice Department as acting attorney general in April after Trump fired Pam Bondi over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he personally oversaw the department's subsequent release of Epstein material — a process for which he apologized to the Judiciary Committee in July after redaction errors exposed information that was supposed to be withheld.

He now inherits a department whose senior ranks have turned over repeatedly since January 2025 and whose civil rights, public integrity and national security divisions have lost large numbers of career attorneys. The confirmation also resolves, at least formally, a fifteen-month stretch in which the department was run first by a fired appointee and then by an acting chief whose authority litigants repeatedly challenged in court. The Senate returns in September.