Sen. Bill Cassidy announced Friday he will vote for Todd Blanche as attorney general, a decision that appears to clinch the narrowest possible Senate confirmation for President Trump's nominee.
Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who had kept Washington guessing for weeks, took to the Senate floor on August 7 to declare his support, and to make clear he was not offering a ringing endorsement. He called Blanche imperfect. He said the nominee would agree. But he framed the choice as binary: confirm Blanche or leave the Justice Department under an acting leader who might perform worse.
With Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska already committed to voting no, and Sen. Mitch McConnell absent from the chamber, Blanche could not afford to lose a single additional Republican vote. Every Senate Democrat is expected to oppose. Cassidy's announcement effectively ends the math problem, if the vote holds.
Cassidy did not pretend the nomination was clean. He acknowledged the controversies that had stalled Blanche for weeks, the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, the sweeping tax immunity deal for the president and his family, and the handling of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. But he argued that rejecting Blanche would leave the Justice Department rudderless at a moment when it needed stable leadership.
Cassidy told colleagues on the floor that blocking Blanche "puts at risk the progress made fighting violent crime, human and drug trafficking, and fraud."
"Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this, but the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche."
He added a pointed warning about the broader trajectory of political prosecutions, a subject that carries weight coming from a senator who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial in February 2021.
"A never-ending cycle of prosecuting political enemies undermines the rule of law, degrades the public's trust in our institutions, and makes our politics more extreme when we need to unite to solve the big problems of our time. It must stop. It should stop now."
Cassidy was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection. That history makes his decision to back the president's former personal defense lawyer all the more notable, and all the more clearly a pragmatic calculation rather than a loyalty play. He said as much: "This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances."
Blanche's path to the Senate floor required weeks of negotiation with two Republican holdouts on the Judiciary Committee, Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Both had withheld their support over the terms of the IRS settlement that Trump struck with the Justice Department in May.
That settlement resolved a $10 billion civil lawsuit Trump had filed over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor. It included two provisions that troubled Republicans on the committee: a $1.8 billion fund designed to pay people who alleged they had been unfairly targeted by the federal government, and a grant of sweeping immunity from tax audits and investigations for Trump, his family members, and affiliated entities.
Blanche told senators during his confirmation hearing that the fund was "dead." But words alone did not satisfy Cornyn and Tillis. The Justice Department ultimately issued a new order rescinding the May directive that created the fund and narrowing the scope of the tax immunity deal. Blanche also provided written confirmation that the fund had been closed.
That was enough. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 along party lines on Tuesday to advance Blanche's nomination to the full Senate.
Not everyone bought the deal. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, dismissed the concessions as cosmetic. Blumenthal argued that "the tax immunity deal is still unlimited, in terms of past potential liability" and that "the slush fund is still alive and well, so far as Donald Trump is concerned."
Sen. Dick Durbin offered a blunter assessment, calling Blanche unfit for the role. Durbin said Blanche "continues to operate as the president's personal lawyer, treating the Justice Department like a law firm serving one client, the president."
Even a Republican ally acknowledged the limits of the arrangement. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked whether anything would prevent Trump from simply reinstating the fund or the immunity provisions after Blanche is confirmed, offered a candid shrug: "I'm not saying he will or he won't, what's stopping the president from doing anything? But it was important to Cornyn and important to Tillis."
Legal analysts have raised a related concern. Writing at National Review, Michael A. Fragoso noted that because the anti-weaponization fund was established through a settlement agreement, a binding contract, Blanche may lack the unilateral authority to kill it. "One party cannot just abrogate a contract unilaterally; that's normally called breach," Fragoso wrote.
The anti-weaponization fund was not the only obstacle. Blanche also faced scrutiny over the Justice Department's release of more than 3 million pages of documents from the Epstein investigation. Some of those documents contained unredacted names and personal information of victims. Blanche acknowledged during his confirmation hearing that "mistakes were made."
Sen. Tillis had previously said he would withhold support until Blanche met with survivors of Epstein's crimes. Blanche held that meeting at the Justice Department last month. But at least one survivor was not reassured. The survivor described the sit-down as "a check-the-box exercise" designed to secure votes for his confirmation and urged senators to reject the nomination.
Blanche's meeting last year with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, added another layer of concern for critics. The details of that meeting have not been publicly disclosed.
Trump announced Blanche as his nominee in June, after ousting Pam Bondi from the attorney general post in April. Blanche has served as acting attorney general since Bondi's departure.
Cassidy's support resolves the vote count, but the Senate calendar presents its own complication. The chamber planned to hold votes on several GOP priorities Friday before leaving Washington for a five-week recess. Whether Blanche's confirmation vote would be part of that sprint remained unclear as of Friday morning.
A floor vote requires either unanimous consent from Democrats to expedite or a longer procedural path. With every Democrat expected to oppose Blanche, unified Democratic opposition could delay the final vote until after recess, leaving Blanche to continue running the Justice Department in an acting capacity for weeks longer.
Cassidy made his own position plain. He cast his support not as enthusiasm but as a sober judgment that the alternative was worse. He did not pretend the controversies had been resolved. He argued they had been managed well enough to move forward.
That is the standard the Senate has set for the nation's chief law enforcement officer: not perfect, but better than the next option. Whether that standard holds up is now a question for the full chamber, and for the country watching it.
