Todd Blanche Killed His $1.8 Billion Rioter Fund to Buy Off Two Republican Holdouts and Squeaked Out of Committee 12-10 — Then a Second Republican, Lisa Murkowski, Came Out Against Him Anyway, Saying "The Country Needs an Attorney General Who Will Check the Worst Impulses of This Administration," Leaving Trump's Personal Lawyer's Path to Run the DOJ Hanging by a Single Vote

Todd Blanche did everything a nominee in trouble is supposed to do. He negotiated. He gave ground. He killed the most indefensible thing he was carrying. And it may not be enough — because the problem with Blanche was never one policy. It was the whole idea of him: the president's personal criminal-defense lawyer, running the Justice Department that is supposed to be independent of the president.

The ransom he already paid

As documented here, Blanche's nomination stalled when two Republicans — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — refused to advance it until the DOJ disavowed the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, the program built to compensate the January 6 rioters Trump pardoned. Blanche paid the price they named:

• He formally rescinded the $1.8 billion fund
• He clarified the scope of the sweeping IRS tax-audit immunity deal engineered for Trump and his businesses

It worked, barely. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination on a party-line 12-10 vote, sending it to the floor. Cornyn and Tillis, their condition met, were back on board.

The defection that undid it

But clearing committee only exposed the deeper problem. On August 4, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced she would vote no. And on August 7, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined her. Murkowski's statement was the one that mattered, because it did not turn on a single line-item that could be traded away:

"The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration. I will oppose his nomination."

She said it despite "numerous constructive meetings" with Blanche. And she itemized the reasons — a list that reads like a table of contents of this administration's assault on the rule of law:

• The Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files — the defiance of a court order and the transparency law Trump himself signed
• The sweeping tax-audit immunity deal for Trump — the collusive IRS settlement a federal judge voided as a sham
• The $1.8 billion fund for the president's allies

That is the point Blanche could not negotiate around. Cornyn and Tillis wanted a specific concession, and got it. Murkowski wants something Blanche cannot give: an attorney general who would say no to the president. Blanche is the president's lawyer. Independence is the one thing not on the table.

The math

The arithmetic is now brutal for the White House. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, but Sen. Mitch McConnell is absent for medical reasons, tightening the margin. Blanche can afford to lose only two Republican votes.

Collins and Murkowski are those two.

The entire nomination now rests on a single senator: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — an outgoing member who has broken with Trump before. If Cassidy votes no, Blanche fails. Trump's hand-picked loyalist to run the Justice Department, his own former defense attorney, is one Republican vote away from being rejected by a Republican Senate.

Why it matters

It is worth pausing on how far this had to go. Confirming a president's cabinet is the most routine exercise of party loyalty in Washington; Trump's nominees have sailed through on party lines for two years. For a nominee to be in peril, several Republicans have to look at him and conclude that putting him in the job would be worse than crossing their own president. That is what has happened here.

And the reasons they gave are the indictment. Collins and Murkowski did not object to Blanche's qualifications or temperament. They objected to what the Justice Department has done under him and would keep doing with him confirmed — bury the Epstein files, launder the president immunity, stand up a fund to pay the rioters, direct prosecutions at the president's enemies. Murkowski's phrase — an AG who will "check the worst impulses of this administration" — is a concession, from a member of the president's own party, that this administration has worst impulses that need checking, and that the man nominated to run its law enforcement is not the person to check them.

Blanche may still be confirmed; Cassidy may fold, or the White House may find a vote. But the story of the moment is that the corruption catalogued across this archive — the Epstein defiance, the sham IRS immunity, the rioter fund, the weaponized DOJ — has finally cost Trump something concrete: not a lawsuit he can appeal or a headline he can outrun, but Republican votes, and possibly the confirmation of the loyalist he most wanted in place. The check did not come from the courts or the opposition this time. It came from two women in his own party, saying the quiet thing out loud: the country needs an attorney general who would tell this president no.