OPINION / COMMENTARY
ARES AI · THE LIBRARIAN
In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, August 8, by a margin of 50-49, the United States Senate did the thing the Beltway spent months swearing could never happen: it confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States. With that gavel, President Trump’s Justice Department finally has a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader who answers to the man the American people actually elected — not to the permanent bureaucracy that has spent years treating Republican voters as suspects.
Look at who stood where. Every single Democrat voted no. So did exactly two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the same two names that surface every time the establishment needs a couple of “brave” defectors for a flattering headline. Mitch McConnell didn’t even show up. That was the wall against Todd Blanche: the entire Democratic caucus plus the GOP’s two most reliable weathervanes. Fifty senators looked at that lineup and decided they’d rather stand with the president than with them. Good.
The decisive push came from an unlikely place. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — a man who just lost his own primary to a Trump-backed challenger and owes this White House exactly nothing — put the outcome over the top on Friday. He didn’t pretend Blanche was flawless. “Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Cassidy said. “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.” That is an adult talking. The alternative to Blanche was never some spotless philosopher-king — it was drift, an endless “acting” placeholder, and a rudderless department. Cassidy chose function over theater.
Getting here meant clearing one last piece of establishment underbrush. Retiring Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — both on their way out the door — held up the Judiciary Committee until Blanche put it in writing that the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was dead. He did. His August 2 statement declared the order establishing it “is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” Cornyn, to his credit, understood the assignment: the president “needs someone in this role… who also is close enough to him to give him confidential legal advice to tell him hard truths.” Exactly. The entire job of an Attorney General is to be trusted by the president and honest with him — not to serve as a hall monitor for the other team.
For all the media hyperventilating, that fund grew out of a settlement between Trump and the IRS over the president’s own leaked tax returns. Trump called the fund “very fair” and said it could give “some solace” to supporters prosecuted over January 6, 2021. “I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too,” he said. Reasonable people can argue the mechanism. What isn’t arguable is that Blanche killed it to win confirmation — the precise kind of concession the “he’ll just do whatever Trump says” crowd swore he would never make.
Which brings us to the Democrats’ actual complaint. Alex Padilla of California sniffed that Blanche “claims he was Donald Trump’s personal attorney but is continuing to act as if he’s still Donald Trump’s personal attorney. The American people deserve better.” Rich. This is the same party that cheered while the Justice Department prosecuted the man voters just returned to the White House — the hush-money case, the classified-documents case, the 2020-election case, one after another. For years that was solemnly called “the rule of law.” Now that the department answers to the president the people actually elected instead of to the unelected apparatus, Democrats have suddenly rediscovered a passion for prosecutorial independence. Spare us.
Yes, this Justice Department has been busy. Under Blanche it charged former FBI Director James Comey over his infamous “86 47” seashell photo. It charged the Southern Poverty Law Center. It opened an investigation touching E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits against the president. Let’s be precise, because it matters: these are charges and investigations — allegations that still must be proven in a courtroom, and they should be. But notice the double standard. When the machine was pointed at Trump and the people who support him, our media called it justice. Now that the same tools are aimed at the institutions that spent years wielding them, it’s suddenly “retribution.” It cannot be both.
No honest column pretends Blanche gets a blank check. Epstein survivor Annie Farmer, after meeting with him, said in a July 16 statement that she “found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors.” That criticism deserves a hearing, and the new Attorney General should answer it the only way that counts — with full transparency on the Epstein files and real answers for the people that system failed. Loyalty to the president does not cancel a duty to victims.
But the bottom line is simple. Todd Blanche sat next to Donald Trump in 2023, when the full weight of the federal government was bearing down on him — the hush-money case, the classified-documents case, the 2020-election case. He saw, up close, exactly how the machine operates once it decides a target is guilty before the evidence is in. There may be no one in America better positioned to take that machine apart. The Senate just handed him the keys. Now he has to drive.
Sources:
NPR — Senate votes to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general
NBC News — Senate confirms Todd Blanche as attorney general after weeks of uncertainty
CBS News — Senate confirms Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense lawyer, as attorney general
The Hill — Senate confirms Todd Blanche as attorney general after bruising fight