Todd Blanche narrowly confirmed as attorney general

Attorney General Todd Blanche in confirmation hearing

(Image credit: Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

What happened

The Senate early Saturday narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general, a position he held in an acting capacity since April, when President Donald Trump sacked Pam Bondi. The 50-49 vote was mostly along party lines, with Republicans Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) joining Democrats in voting no. Trump announced Sunday that his staff secretary, Will Scharf — like Blanche, a former member of his personal legal team — will take over as White House counsel next month.

Blanche’s “path to confirmation” was “unusually rocky,” with his “loyalty to Trump at the center of the stalemate,” The Associated Press said. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that Blanche’s continued support for shielding Trump’s family from IRS audits “almost weighed” his decisive yes vote to a no, but he was swayed by the deal Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) forced that “effectively” killed Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund.”

The “three lame-duck Republican senators” who “narrowly saved” Blanche’s job “believed he was the only person who had earned enough trust” to “rein in” Trump, Glenn Thrush said in a New York Times analysis. But Blanche is a “champion of unbridled presidential power,” and his confirmation “represented a powerful endorsement” of the new attorney general’s guiding philosophy that “he has a constitutional obligation to execute every lawful White House order” from his “meddling, demanding boss,” even if it “shatters longstanding policy and rule-of-law norms, or contradicts what he thinks is right.”