Trump nominates Todd Blanche as attorney general

WASHINGTON (CN) — Todd Blanche is President Donald Trump’s nominee to become his next attorney general, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republican majority announced on Monday.

It was widely expected that the president would formally tap Blanche — who has been serving as acting attorney general since April — to replace the ousted Pam Bondi as his top Justice Department official. But the move came without much fanfare or immediate public acknowledgement from the White House or Trump himself.

And Blanche might face some challenges to his confirmation among Senate Republicans, some of whom have chafed in recent weeks over his defense of a billion-dollar settlement fund established through an agreement between the president and his own government.

In a statement published Monday afternoon, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that the panel had received Blanche’s nomination paperwork from the White House, typically the first step in the process for considering an executive appointment that requires Senate confirmation, such as attorney general.

“I’ve worked well with acting Attorney General Blanche for more than a year and appreciate his commitment to transparency and support for law enforcement,” said Grassley. “Blanche is well-qualified and has shown his dedication to restoring law and order across our country.”

The Judiciary Committee’s announcement that nomination proceedings for Blanche were “underway” has been the only acknowledgement so far that Trump’s former personal attorney and deputy attorney general is his pick to replace Bondi at the head of the Justice Department.

As of Monday afternoon, the White House had yet to issue any formal statement. And Trump, who has made a habit of announcing nominees via posts on his social media platform Truth Social, had similarly not made any reference to his nominee. A spokesperson for the administration did not return a request for comment.

In the minutes after the Senate announced Blanche’s nomination, the president posted on Truth Social a clip of him trashing North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis.

Senate Democrats, for their part, are sure to vehemently oppose Blanche as attorney general. Democratic lawmakers have long argued that his loyalty to his former client outweighs any commitment to the Justice Department’s historical independence from the executive branch. It’s a sentiment that Illinois Senator Dick Durbin summarized in a two-sentence statement Monday.

“Donald Trump has been engaged in the most corrupt enterprise in the history of the presidency,” said Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “Todd Blanche apparently has not noticed.”

Blanche must now face the Senate for what is sure to be a blistering confirmation process. Democrats are sure to press him on a slew of hot-button issues, such as the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute Trump’s political enemies or the firing of agency employees who worked on investigations into the 2020 election or the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The Epstein files are also certain to play a major role in Democratic cross-examination of the attorney general nominee. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared before the House Oversight Committee last month for an interview on her handling of Justice Department documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, told lawmakers that Blanche had taken the lead on the issue.

But Blanche, who for months has served as attorney general in an acting capacity after Trump fired Bondi, might also face some scrutiny from his right flank.

Senate Republicans were skeptical of the nominee last month, following news that the Justice Department would establish a $1.8 billion slush fund for victims of so-called “government weaponization” following a settlement between the president and the Internal Revenue Service. Blanche, who has since said the agency will recant the fund, had a testy meeting with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill following the announcement, who pressed him on whether people who committed violent crimes would be eligible for payouts from the program.

And though Blanche ultimately walked back the slush fund, he defended it to Senate appropriators last month as unusual but “not unprecedented.”

The “weaponization fund” nearly derailed a must-pass budget reconciliation bill working its way through the Senate. And when lawmakers met to vote on the measure, even some Republicans offered amendments that would have set limits on Trump’s deployment of such a slush fund.

During his nomination process, Blanche will likely have to contend with some of the Senate Republicans who voiced their displeasure with the weaponization fund, including Tillis. Support for the nominee is also uncertain among a handful of GOP lawmakers who recently lost primary elections to Trump-backed challengers, such as Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Texas Senator John Cornyn.

Tillis and Cornyn both sit on the Judiciary Committee, forming a crucial hurdle for Blanche that he must overcome if he has any hope of making it to a final vote before the full Senate.

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