Senate votes to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general

The Senate voted to confirm Todd Blanche as U.S. attorney general, elevating the Justice Department's No. 2 leader and President Trump's former personal lawyer to head the entire 100,000-plus person department. The Senate vote, early Saturday morning, was 50-49 in favor of Blanche. All Democrats, as well as Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted against him. Blanche overcame a final speedbump on Friday after securing key support from Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. With the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Murkowski's opposition, Cassidy's vote was crucial in securing a glidepath for Blanche. Cassidy, who lost his renomination bid to a Trump-backed challenger, acknowledged concerns over Blanche's judgment in exempting the president from IRS audits and said he was particularly troubled by the Department of Justice bringing suits against the president's perceived political enemies. But he said his decision to back Blanche was not a referendum on the president. "Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this," Cassidy said on Friday. "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." Legal experts and Democrats questioned whether such statements would stand up in court, as they have not been signed by all parties to the settlement, including Trump himself. "These assurances are not worth the paper they're written on," Brandon DeBot, policy director at the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, told NPR's Ryan Lucas. In fact, Trump earlier this week said the fund would have been "very fair" and could have given "some solace" to Trump supporters who were prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol. "I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too," the president told reporters.