Senate confirms Trump loyalist Todd Blanche as attorney general

Senate Republicans confirmed Todd Blanche as the 88th U.S. attorney general, formally placing one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest loyalists at the helm of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

With the Senate’s 50 to 49 vote early Saturday, Blanche, one of the president’s former criminal defense attorneys, will formally take control of the DOJ as it continues to carry out Trump’s anti-voting crusade and his retribution campaign against his political enemies.

In the process of approving Blanche’s nomination, Senate Republicans also signed off on a corrupt deal giving Trump and his family immunity from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits — an extraordinary protection for a family that has aggressively avoided paying taxes for decades.

Only two Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), voted against his confirmation. 

Blanche already has a track record of serving as the president’s anti-democratic legal attack dog. 

As acting attorney general over the past three months, he has overseen the DOJ’s ongoing efforts to obtain sensitive voter records, intimidate election officials and interfere with state election administration. 

Under Blanche’s watch, the department has worked to implement and defend Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict mail voting. Among several dangerous directives, the order instructed the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to only deliver ballots to voters pre-approved by the federal government.

Last month, the department asked the Supreme Court to grant it emergency relief and lift a lower court order currently barring USPS from carrying out that directive. The Court could rule on that request at any moment.

Beyond litigation, Blanche has backed recent calls from far-right activists for Trump to send federal immigration agents or troops to voting sites during the 2026 midterms — a ploy meant to intimidate voters and poll workers and influence election outcomes. Federal law bars the deployment of armed officials to polling places. 

During his confirmation hearing, Blanche said he would follow those laws but pointedly stopped short of pledging not to deploy agents.

After Trump dismissed former Attorney General Pam Bondi in April for her failure to secure criminal indictments against his political opponents, Blanche as acting attorney general accelerated sham criminal probes and cases against Trump’s foes and progressive organizations that have long drawn the ire of conservatives.

In his first press conference as acting attorney general, Blanche claimed Trump had a “right” and “duty” to order the Department of Justice to investigate his political enemies, 

Shortly after those statements, Blanche quickly announced charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, the storied Alabama-based civil rights organization that has monitored and exposed white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremists for decades. He also spearheaded new criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, one of the president’s longtime targets, over a social media image using seashells to call for Trump’s removal from office.

Republican Sens. Tom Tillis (N.C.) and John Cornyn (Texas) briefly delayed Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the DOJ’s unprecedented settlement with Trump to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit he and his eldest sons filed against the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury.

But the senators advanced Blanche’s nomination after he claimed to terminate the president’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” which the DOJ established as part of the settlement. However, other provisions of the agreement remain in place, including the sweeping immunity from IRS audits.