The Check Broke: Todd Blanche — Trump's Personal Criminal-Defense Lawyer, Referred for Bar Discipline Over a Sham IRS Deal, Who Defied a Court Order to Bury the Epstein Files and Says Trump Has a "Right" to Order Prosecutions of His Enemies — Was Confirmed as Attorney General 50-49, With Bill Cassidy Casting the Decisive Vote

For a few weeks it looked as though a line might hold — that a Republican Senate would decline to hand the Justice Department, permanently, to the president's personal lawyer. Two Republicans said no. The nomination genuinely wobbled. And then, at roughly 2 a.m. on Saturday, it passed by a single vote, and the line was gone.

The vote

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general 50-49 in the early morning of August 8, 2026. The math was as tight as it gets:

• Every Democrat voted no
• Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — the only two Republicans — voted no
• Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was absent, still recovering after a fall in June, which meant no 50-50 tie and no need for Vice President Vance to break one
• Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — the last undecided Republican, and the man who voted to convict Trump in the 2021 impeachment — announced Friday he would vote yes, and became the decisive vote

One senator the other way and it fails. It did not.

Who was just confirmed

It is worth stating, plainly and in one place, who now holds the office. This is not a distinguished jurist or a career prosecutor. The person the Senate just installed as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer is the man at the center of this administration's assault on the rule of law:

• He was Trump's personal criminal-defense attorney before Trump returned to office — and was reportedly advised to recuse from Justice Department matters involving Trump. He did not.
• A federal judge referred him for bar discipline over the collusive IRS "settlement" — the sham lawsuit Trump filed against his own administration to launder himself tax-audit immunity and stand up a $1.8 billion fund to pay the January 6 rioters. The judge found his congressional testimony about it "at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous."
• His Justice Department defied a court order and the Epstein Files Transparency Act — a law Trump himself signed — to keep the Epstein files sealed.
• In his first press conference as acting AG, he declared that the president has a "right" and "duty" to order the department to investigate his enemies — a doctrine the DOJ is now executing, with cases and grand juries aimed at James Comey, Letitia James, John Brennan, and others.

Each of those is documented in its own entry in this archive. The Senate had all of it in front of it. It confirmed him anyway.

What the two "no" votes said

The dissent came from within his own party, and it was not about qualifications. Murkowski summed up the objection: the country needs an attorney general "who will check the worst impulses of this administration." She and Collins looked at the Epstein defiance, the tax-immunity deal, and the rioter fund and concluded that the man nominated to run federal law enforcement was the wrong person to restrain a president who needs restraining.

Their votes were a real act of conscience, and they should be recorded as such. But two is not three. The Republican who might have made it three — Cassidy, who once voted to remove Trump from office entirely — instead supplied the vote that put Trump's lawyer over the top. Whatever moved him, the effect is the same: the check that briefly existed dissolved on a Friday afternoon, and by Saturday morning it was done.

Why "confirmed" is worse than "acting"

Blanche had been running the department as acting attorney general since April, so in one sense little changes day to day. But the difference between "acting" and "confirmed" is not cosmetic. An acting official governs on borrowed authority, subject to the Senate's pending judgment, vulnerable to the argument that the people's representatives never signed off. A confirmed attorney general carries the full, settled authority of the office — the Senate's advice and consent, the presumption of legitimacy, the four-year expectation of tenure. The Senate has now ratified him. The doctrine that the president may direct prosecutions of his enemies, the burial of the Epstein files, the immunity deals — all of it now proceeds under an attorney general the United States Senate formally endorsed, 50-49.

That is the cost of the one vote. A nomination that should have been unthinkable — the president's own defense lawyer, flagged for discipline, running the department that is supposed to be independent of the president — was not merely tolerated but confirmed, on the record, with a majority's name attached to it. The archive has spent months documenting what this Justice Department does. As of August 8, it does it with the Senate's permission, and Todd Blanche does it as the confirmed Attorney General of the United States.