Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared to make progress with key Republican skeptics on Wednesday, putting President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department on a smoother path toward confirmation before the August recess.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said after the confirmation hearing that Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) still had “some issues,” but added, “I think those issues can be worked out.”
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The committee is next poised to hear from outside witnesses during a subsequent hearing on Thursday. Grassley said Blanche would need two weeks before receiving a committee vote, leaving the Senate’s final week before recess as the likely window for a floor vote.
Here are five takeaways from the hearing.
Blanche seems poised to gain needed GOP support
Tillis and Cornyn used their time to raise concerns that have fueled their cautionary approach to Blanche’s nomination, but neither Republican treated the hearing as a final break with him.
Tillis ended his questioning by saying he thought Blanche had done well. Cornyn pressed him on the Trump administration’s IRS settlement and whether its terms could still be enforced, but did not signal opposition.
Mike Fragoso, a former Senate Judiciary Committee aide and former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), said Blanche’s performance likely helped him with the holdouts.
“Tillis seemed perfectly happy with him,” Fragoso told the Washington Examiner. Cornyn “seems to still have questions,” he added, but those questions are “not an unsolvable issue.”
That assessment tracked with Grassley’s confidence that the remaining concerns can be resolved.
Democrats’ sharpest exchanges ended with a whimper
Democrats came armed with concerns about Blanche’s closeness to Trump, the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, its personnel decisions, and the attempted anti-weaponization fund.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) challenged Blanche over the administration’s posture toward the president’s adversaries, while Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) argued the IRS settlement “stinks” because Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, signed off on it.
Blanche did not concede the broader allegations. He repeatedly said he could not discuss pending cases or investigations, and he disputed claims that he personally negotiated the IRS settlement.
University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Blanche was “very smooth and doesn’t get rattled,” though he viewed many of the nominee’s answers as evasive. Fragoso saw the result differently, saying Democrats “weren’t very disciplined” and did not land a decisive blow.
Trump’s IRS settlement — and its dead fund — remained the central complication
The anti-weaponization fund resulted from the Trump administration’s settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the unlawful leak of his tax information by former contractor Charles Littlejohn. But that didn’t stop lawmakers from questioning Blanche sharply about it.
Trump initially sought $10 billion from the government. Instead of pursuing that payment, the DOJ agreed in May to create a proposed $1.776 billion fund for people claiming they had been politically targeted by the government, while the settlement also purported to shield Trump and his adult children from audits concerning their past tax filings.
The arrangement quickly became a political and legal problem for Blanche. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled that Trump could not invoke the settlement to avoid scrutiny of those past filings, finding that Trump and his own administration’s IRS were not genuinely adverse parties. Williams, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, also sanctioned attorneys involved in the matter and directed the clerk to refer her decision to attorney-disciplinary authorities, a move that conservatives criticized as excessive.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) put the issue at the center of his questioning, asking Blanche whether the fund could be revived and how the administration could assure Congress it would not move forward. Blanche responded that the fund “is dead” and that no money was transferred, no commissioners were appointed, and the DOJ would not restart it.
Blanche acknowledged the underlying settlement remains an enforceable document, leaving in place some concerns that Trump or other plaintiffs could attempt to enforce its terms even if the DOJ says the fund is over.
Fragoso said Williams’s ruling raised new questions that Cornyn, a former judge on the Texas Supreme Court and self-dealing hawk, had also picked up on, but argued Williams’s decision appeared rushed to shape the confirmation fight.
He noted that her opinion confused former D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown with Judge Judith Rogers and incorrectly identified the DOJ’s Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward as White House counsel, giving the appearance of a rushed job that was intended to precede this week’s hearing for partisan reasons.
“Insofar as Blanche was pretty dismissive of it, that kind of made sense,” Fragoso said, while adding that the issue is “very solvable” given Blanche’s public commitment that the fund will not proceed.
Anti-abortion advocates receive glimmers of hope on mail-order pills
Tillis and Cornyn pressed Blanche over Louisiana v. FDA, a case challenging the Biden administration’s loosening of restrictions on abortion pills, including their distribution by mail, a key issue among anti-abortion advocates who have lobbied Blanche to move quickly to settle the lawsuit, according to a letter sent last week from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Blanche declined to preview the administration’s litigation strategy but said the DOJ disagreed with the Biden administration’s position and would take the senators’ concerns seriously. He also agreed to provide a written response to their letter on the matter.
Fragoso said that was about as much as anti-abortion advocates could reasonably expect from a nominee overseeing an active matter.
“The pro-life movement should want the FDA to get the real answers and put together as comprehensive and airtight a rulemaking as they can,” he said, arguing a durable Food and Drug Administration record would be more valuable than a short-term litigation settlement.
Epstein never goes away, but the criticism lost steam
The Epstein files remained central to Democrats’ case against Blanche, with lawmakers criticizing the DOJ’s redactions and handling of survivors’ personal information. Blanche said the department had released nearly 3 million pages and was unaware of additional responsive material.
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He also said the DOJ had evidence that women were trafficked by Epstein but did not presently have evidence that they were trafficked to other men.
The issue will receive another airing Thursday, when the Senate Judiciary Committee hears from outside witnesses, including an Epstein survivor. But it did not appear to shake Blanche’s Republican support Wednesday, as GOP senators devoted more attention to the IRS settlement, alleged DOJ weaponization, and abortion pill litigation.
