President Donald Trump’s preference for personal loyalty in his subordinates may pose an insurmountable problem for a White House in search of a permanent attorney general. Nominee and acting A.G. Todd Blanche — the president’s onetime personal lawyer — faces a steep nomination process ahead, as concerns grow over Blanche’s alleged willingness to subvert the role of attorney general for the president’s political purposes.
Is Blanche’s nomination dead on arrival? Or does Trump still command the senatorial clout to ensure his longtime consigliere survives a bruising nomination fight?
‘He’s put his credibility on the line’
Blanche will test whether a “handful of increasingly restive Republican senators” are “prepared to defy Trump on a high-profile nominee,” said The Washington Post. As acting attorney general, Blanche “played a central role in setting up” Trump’s $1.8 billion DOJ weaponization reparations fund — a move that “triggered a rare revolt by Senate Republicans” before the courts froze the project entirely.
Blanche would replace former A.G. Pam Bondi after she was “forced out of the administration following the botched handling of the Epstein files,” said Politico. But during a closed-door congressional interview last month, Bondi told lawmakers that it was Blanche who was “responsible for the Justice Department’s handling of the files.”
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, “just one GOP rebel could stop the whole thing,” said Semafor. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has had “no issue gumming up Trump’s nominees” in the past, said ABC News. Blanche’s odds of a successful nomination “go up immensely” if the controversial weaponization fund is truly dead, Tillis said to reporters last week, per ABC. However, he remains “undecided” at the moment.
Blanche has “told us and the world that we’re not going to do” the fund, and “I believe him,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to reporters per Semafor. “He’s put his credibility on the line, and that’s what I expect him to say in a hearing.” Whether Blanche remains as committed as he’s indicated “will obviously impact the story.”
‘Corruption’ and ‘competence’
There are “two stories” playing into Blanche’s nomination, said MS NOW legal analyst Andrew Weissmann to Slate. The first is a “story about corruption” and the “complicity he is willing to engage in for the president.” The second is a “question of competence” about someone who has “made a series of serious missteps.” Given “such an array of things to ask him about, the only question is whether senators will be effective in asking those questions.”
Having voted in lockstep for Bondi during her nomination, “by contrast, Republicans seem noncommittal on Blanche,” said The Independent. In a “healthier political climate,” there would be “dozens” of GOP senators who would “immediately pronounce Mr. Blanche unqualified for the job,” said The New York Times. Today, the list of senators who “may have the courage to do so is shorter, yet plenty long enough.”
Past scandals and a history of personal service to Trump are complicating the president’s pick to lead the Justice Department