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Todd Blanche overcame a key hurdle to securing the post of US attorney-general on Tuesday after his nomination narrowly passed a critical congressional panel.
The Senate judiciary committee voted 12-10 to advance Blanche’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice to the full Senate floor, after he met the demands of two Republican senators who had threatened to hold up his promotion.
The committee’s approval brings Blanche one step closer to permanently staking out his place at the helm of Donald Trump’s DoJ, which has targeted the president’s perceived enemies and emboldened his allies.
Blanche ultimately won the backing of both John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, the Republicans who raised concerns over his short but chaotic tenure as acting attorney-general.
The key sticking points were over the modification of Trump’s settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, including the $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund that was set up in exchange for the president and his family dropping a $10bn lawsuit against the agency, and Blanche’s handling of troves of files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The committee vote was stalled after Blanche failed to present written assurances that the slush fund plan would not be resurrected.
Trump threatened to pull Blanche’s nomination over the conflict, saying he was considering resubmitting his name next year when the two senators would no longer be in Congress. But after “good faith discussions”, a deal was struck to “officially rescind” the fund in writing.
Tillis had also mandated that Blanche meet some of Epstein’s victims before he would approve his nomination, and while the acting attorney-general complied, the women he met said they left the meeting feeling “dismissed and demoralised”.
Democrats on the judiciary committee voted against Blanche, with Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, saying the “political escapade” made it clear that Blanche has “no business” serving as attorney-general.
Blanche joined the Trump administration as deputy attorney-general after serving as the president’s criminal defence attorney. He took over leading the DoJ as attorney-general following the ousting of his predecessor, Pam Bondi.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Blanche was grilled over his close ties to Trump and at one point said, “I’m his lawyer”, before quickly correcting to say, “was his lawyer”. Adam Schiff, a top Democrat on the committee, later described the remark as a Freudian slip.
The final vote on whether to confirm Blanche has not yet been scheduled.
Source:
www.ft.com
