WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said he would move to nominate acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday to permanently lead the Justice Department, which would make his former personal lawyer the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
“He’s acting attorney general. Tomorrow, I’m instructing Dan (Scavino) and everybody else that’s involved in that very complicated process — which is going to go, I think, very quickly — that we are going to make him permanent attorney general,” Trump said at a White House event, according to a video posted on X late on Wednesday by his aide Scavino.
Blanche, 51, took over leadership of the Justice Department after Trump fired Pam Bondi in April amid tension over the agency’s release of files related to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and frustration that the department was not moving forcefully enough against the White House’s supposed political enemies.
Blanche’s nomination could prove to be another test of Trump’s power over the Republican-controlled Senate, which would need to approve his nomination and which recently rebelled against the Justice Department’s now-scuttled plan to create a $1.8 billion fund for victims of alleged government “weaponization.” Blanche would need near-unanimous Republican support in the Senate, which Republicans control by a narrow 53-47 margin.
SENATE CONFIRMATION UNCERTAIN
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Thursday that it is not certain that lawmakers would vote to confirm Blanche.
“Hard to say,” Thune told reporters. “Most of our members are pretty deferential to who the president wants in some of these key positions, and he’s obviously serving in the role already and clearly has experience in it, so that serves him well. But this is an environment where nothing’s a safe or a sure bet these days.”
Blanche said on Tuesday that the DOJ would not be moving forward with the plan, which sparked fierce bipartisan opposition and threatened to derail a $72 billion funding package for Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Blanche told reporters at an unrelated press conference on Thursday that he has a “good relationship with the Senate on both sides.”
“I’m looking forward to working with the senators and getting them the information they need through the confirmation process,” he said.
Trump on Wednesday would not say whether the fund had been terminated or was on hold, saying, “I’d have to ask the lawyers. I don’t know.”
WEAPONIZATION FUND CONTROVERSY CONTINUES
“I love it. I think it’s so important,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “The weaponization fund, as far as I’m concerned, was a beautiful thing.”
Some lawmakers have called for a ban on the fund to be documented in writing or codified into law. Blanche told members of Congress this week that he would not commit to putting anything into writing.
Trump said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday that he was likely to nominate Blanche to the permanent position.
Blanche has moved quickly as acting attorney general to ingratiate himself to Trump and his political movement. In addition to the fund, the DOJ under Blanche has removed press releases detailing cases arising from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, released a report condemning past prosecutions of anti-abortion activists and secured criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group and former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime Trump foe.
Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in New York and white-collar criminal defense attorney, represented Trump in three of the four criminal cases he faced during his years out of power.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Andrew Goudsward, Jacob Bogage, Katharine Jackson and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Mark Porter and Matthew Lewis)
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