Blanche faces tough Senate hearing as Justice Department nomination advances

Todd Blanche spent about five hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday pressing his bid to become attorney general, as Democrats zeroed in on the Justice Department’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein files and a proposed $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. The hearing in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building offered the clearest look yet at how Blanche might run the department if confirmed on a permanent basis.

Blanche opened by telling senators he was there to "earn your trust once more" and said he wanted to help restore "American trust" in the Justice Department. He has served as acting attorney general since April, after President Donald Trump fired Pam Bondi, and Trump formally nominated him in June. Blanche had already won unanimous Republican confirmation last year as deputy attorney general, a record that did not prevent a far tougher examination this time.

The sharpest questions came from Democrats, who pressed Blanche on whether the Justice Department had become an instrument of presidential power rather than an independent law enforcement agency. He was grilled on probes involving Trump’s political rivals, on efforts tied to Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and on whether his leadership had politicized the department. Blanche also faced sustained scrutiny over the department’s handling of the Epstein files, a politically volatile issue that has become a measure of how much information the department is willing to release under Trump.

Blanche confirmed under oath that the proposed Anti-Weaponization Fund is "dead." The settlement would have created a nearly $1.8 billion fund for people who claim they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration, and its collapse removed one of the hearing’s most potent flashpoints. Even so, the exchange underscored a larger concern for senators: whether Blanche would use the Justice Department to revisit grievances from Trump’s orbit or enforce a stricter boundary between politics and prosecutorial power.

Republican support was not fully settled. Thom Tillis and John Cornyn were seen as potentially undecided, and Blanche likely needs every Republican on the Judiciary Committee to move forward. The path became harder after the sudden death of Lindsey Graham, who had been expected to be a strong advocate. Committee chairman Chuck Grassley defended Blanche and said the department had produced about 43,000 pages of records to Congress since January 2025, roughly three times the volume released by the Biden Justice Department over a comparable period.

Administration officials want Blanche confirmed before the August recess, but the hearing showed that several Republican senators still need more than loyalty tests. They need assurance that Blanche would run the Justice Department with independence, not as a political arm of the White House.