Bill Cassidy Will Back Todd Blanche as Attorney General, Salvaging His Confirmation

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Friday that he would support Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, effectively saving the confirmation of President Trump’s pick after two other Republican senators said they would oppose him.

Mr. Cassidy, who lost his re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger, said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had deep concerns about “apparent lawfare,” the phrase he has used to refer to the Justice Department’s targeting of the president’s political enemies.

But Mr. Cassidy said that after much consideration, he had come to believe that Mr. Blanche, who has served as the president’s personal lawyer, would be better positioned to push back against Mr. Trump’s norm-busting demands than an alternative.

“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Mr. 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.”

He announced his decision hours after Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the second Republican to oppose Mr. Blanche’s confirmation, joining Senator Susan Collins of Maine. That threw the nominee’s fate into doubt, given that he could not afford additional Republican defectors, and intensified attention on Mr. Cassidy.

Ms. Murkowski said in a statement that she, too, harbored concerns over the “politicization” of the Justice Department. But the conclusion she reached was the opposite of Mr. Cassidy’s: She said that she feared that Mr. Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration.”

Ms. Murkowski cited the department’s handling of the release of the Epstein files, which Mr. Blanche oversaw, and the settlement agreement that Mr. Blanche negotiated in Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S., which included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Ms. Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Ms. Collins, who is running for re-election in a state that Mr. Trump lost in 2024, said on Tuesday that she would vote against Mr. Blanche over similar concerns. Given the continued absence of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who has been gone for nearly eight weeks because of illness, Mr. Blanche could afford to lose no more than two Republican votes and still win a majority for confirmation over the opposition of Democrats.

Ms. Murkowski, Ms. Collins and Mr. Cassidy are the only three remaining Republican senators in office who voted to convict Mr. Trump on impeachment charges and remove him from office following the Jan. 6 attack.

Mr. Trump had urged Senate Republicans to swiftly confirm Mr. Blanche, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, is hoping to bring his nomination to a vote before lawmakers leave Washington this weekend for their August recess.

Mr. Blanche’s nomination has had a rough road. The Judiciary Committee delayed advancing it to the full Senate after two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, raised questions about the $1.8 billion fund, which Mr. Blanche had said would not move ahead, and the extraordinary immunity from tax audits given to Mr. Trump and his businesses in his resolution of the I.R.S. lawsuit.

After days of negotiation, Mr. Blanche on Sunday night provided written assurances that the fund was dead and that the immunity for the president would be narrowed, and Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Tillis dropped their objections.

But while Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Tillis focused their demands on the terms of the settlement, both Ms. Murkowski and Ms. Collins made a much broader case that Mr. Blanche’s participation in the plan’s creation was itself disqualifying.

In her statement, Ms. Murkowski said that she also worried that Mr. Blanche’s commitments could be easily undone and the fund could too easily be restored after his confirmation, a concern shared by many critics.

“I am also keenly aware that the department’s nearly $2-billion dollar slush fund — which likely would have rewarded Jan. 6 protesters — is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage,” she said. “Once we vote, that will end, and there is no telling what the future holds.”

Like Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski is a supporter of abortion rights. In announcing their opposition, both referenced Mr. Blanche’s telling anti-abortion groups that he would take a hard line in enforcing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

In his speech on Friday, Mr. Cassidy also criticized Mr. Blanche’s involvement in negotiating the fund and the audit protections, calling it “poor judgment.”

But he said that discussions with Mr. Blanche led him to believe that the acting attorney general viewed those decisions as mistakes. Mr. Blanche met privately with both him and Ms. Murkowski on Wednesday at the Capitol.

Mr. Cassidy said that he had been influenced in part by Mr. Trump’s threat to keep Mr. Blanche as the acting attorney general indefinitely, effectively ignoring any resistance from Congress. The senator said he believed a Senate confirmation vote would give Mr. Blanche “greater leverage to push for things that should be pushed for” than he would have if he continued in an acting capacity.

He also cited Mr. Blanche’s support from William P. Barr, who served as attorney general during Mr. Trump’s first term but resigned rather than promote or investigate the president’s lies about the 2020 election.

Mr. Barr, who has established himself as an informal adviser to Mr. Blanche, has argued in private meetings with senators that Mr. Blanche has the temperament, access and approach to quietly mitigate the president’s demands. Mr. Barr’s own efforts to counter Mr. Trump were intermittent and had mixed results.

Mr. Cassidy, who has become more openly critical of the president since his election defeat in May, said his views about Mr. Trump did not factor into his decision about Mr. Blanche.

“I have a history with Mr. Trump,” he said, “but that history does not matter one bit.”

The Louisiana Republican, a doctor who leads the health committee, faced significant outcry last year after backing Mr. Trump’s choice of a vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be the health secretary, after securing promises from Mr. Kennedy that were later broken. That decision may have cost him critical support with moderate voters in his failed primary campaign.

On Friday, he appeared to grow emotional as he announced his decision on Mr. Blanche.

“I’ll be criticized for this vote,” Mr. Cassidy said. “What’s new?”

Then he paused to collect himself, his voice growing shaky as he said his constituents could be “assured that I worked hard to understand the issue and to make the right decision.”

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.