WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced that she’ll vote no on Todd Blanche for U.S. attorney general.
“The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” she wrote in a social media post early Friday. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”
Murkowski's announcement put the nomination on the rocks. Hours later, though, another swing Republican vote rescued it. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has voted against some of Trump’s agenda since losing his Republican primary this spring to a Trump-endorsed challenger. Cassidy announced on the Senate floor he’ll vote for the nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this. But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” Cassidy said. “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."
Murkowski, in explaining her no vote, cited a string of matters Blanche handled as deputy and acting attorney general.
She took issue with the Justice Department’s immunity deal to shield President Trump and his family from tax obligations. She also raised the department’s decisions to target Trump’s political adversaries and the way it handled the release of the Epstein files, documenting sexual abuse and misdeeds by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and others.
And Murkowski cited a nearly $2 billion "slush fund," as she called it, that the administration wants, which could reward those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
That plan 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.”
Her 212-word statement does not mention Trump by name.
