Todd Blanche's AG Nomination Hits the Senate With Three Unresolved Problems Baked In

Since our June 15 coverage of the nomination's submission, the Senate confirmation picture has sharpened, and it is not straightforward.

The Votes Aren't There Yet

Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to predict confirmation when asked directly, telling reporters the environment is one "where nothing is a safe or sure bet," according to the Executive Functions newsletter from former White House Counsel Bob Bauer. Thune added that most GOP members remain "pretty deferential to who the president wants in these key positions" — which is the standard posture, not a whip count.

The problem is the non-standard senators. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is among the outgoing members who have no electoral incentive to fall in line. Tillis told reporters last Thursday he has NOT decided whether to support Blanche, and he set a specific condition: Blanche must explicitly condemn the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He has not done so publicly.

Tillis simultaneously acknowledged that Blanche's decision to abandon the anti-weaponization fund "improves Todd's chances" — faint praise that signals how much damage the fund saga did.

The Fund Fiasco

The $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" was the defining controversy of Blanche's brief acting tenure. The fund, structured as part of a settlement over the leaking of Trump's tax returns, would have paid out claims from people who alleged government persecution.

CBS News reported that Democrats called it a "slush fund" for Trump allies. What made it politically toxic was that Blanche declined, under direct questioning, to rule out January 6 defendants receiving payments. That triggered what Sen. Ted Cruz publicly described as a "full-on revolt" in a closed-door Senate GOP meeting.

A federal judge blocked the fund before it launched. The Justice Department then confirmed in a court filing it would not move forward. Blanche told lawmakers the department was "not moving forward" — but the reversal came after the revolt, not before it, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will almost certainly revisit the episode.

The Recusal Problem

Bob Bauer, writing in Executive Functions, offers a sharp institutional critique of the Blanche nomination. Bauer argues the Senate is asking the wrong questions by focusing narrowly on Blanche's specific decisions rather than what the nomination represents structurally.

Blanche personally represented Trump in three federal prosecutions: the January 6 case, the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and the Manhattan business records prosecution. He is now the nation's top law enforcement officer, overseeing the Justice Department that handles matters directly connected to that legal history.

According to Bauer, Blanche has NOT recused himself from oversight of cases stemming from those representations. This marks a departure from the ethical rules that have governed past attorneys general with conflict-of-interest histories. Bauer frames this as a structural gutting of DOJ independence, not merely a personnel question.

An attorney general who personally represented the sitting president, and who then oversees a department empowered to investigate that president's political opponents, creates a conflict-of-interest problem that recusal rules exist to prevent. Critics are not asking Blanche to be disloyal to Trump; they are asking him to follow the same rules previous appointees, Republican and Democratic, were expected to follow.

The Fair Defense of the Nomination

The strongest good-faith argument for confirming Blanche is the argument Thune gestured at: he is already doing the job. Blanche has served first as deputy attorney general since early 2025, then as acting AG since Pam Bondi's firing in April. Whatever concerns exist about conflicts, the department has continued to function, and there is a real institutional cost to leaving a senior cabinet position in an acting capacity indefinitely.

There is also a precedent problem for the recusal argument. Past attorneys general — Robert Kennedy serving under his brother, Eric Holder's close alignment with the Obama White House — faced similar closeness-to-the-president objections and were confirmed. Holding Blanche to a strict standard others were not held to is a legitimate counterpoint, even if the scale of his prior personal legal representation is arguably different in degree.

Blanche's supporters can also point to the fund reversal as evidence that Senate oversight worked: the threat of Senate resistance stopped a controversial policy before it launched.

Coverage and the Recusal Gap

Both CBS News and TIME covered the anti-weaponization fund and the Tillis obstacle, but neither engaged substantively with the recusal question. The Bauer piece in Executive Functions is the only source that frames the confirmation as a structural institutional question rather than a personality-and-controversy checklist. Readers relying solely on the mainstream coverage get a confirmation-fight story; the deeper story is about what kind of attorney general independence the Senate is willing to accept going forward.

The Path Forward

The nomination now sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee. No hearing date has been publicly scheduled as of June 16. Tillis's vote is the clearest single variable to watch: he sits on the Judiciary Committee, he has already slowed other nominations — including holding up Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh's consideration until DOJ dropped its investigation into Jerome Powell — and he has stated a specific, testable condition for his support. Whether Blanche will publicly condemn January 6 in a confirmation hearing, on the record, is the question that determines whether Tillis becomes a yes or a no, and potentially whether the nomination clears committee at all.