Republican senator Lisa Murkowski announced Friday she will vote against Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general, giving the uniparty exactly the votes it needs to sink Trump's pick and protect the Justice Department from an outsider who might actually reform it.
With Murkowski and Susan Collins both opposed and Mitch McConnell out indefinitely, Blanche has zero room for another Republican defection. The math is that tight. The establishment knows it, and they're using every lever they have.
Murkowski said in a statement that she's worried the Trump administration could revive its proposed $1.8 billion fund to compensate January 6 defendants even though Blanche pledged to shelve it. Her argument: the Senate only has leverage over the fund because Blanche's nomination is still pending. Confirm him, and that leverage disappears.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution framed the fund straightforwardly as money "to compensate Jan. 6 rioters." The Guardian called it Trump's "anti-weaponization" fund — the administration's own term — and noted it arose from a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Both outlets raised the same unanswered question: what's to stop the fund from coming back once Blanche is confirmed?
There's a Follow The Money angle here that matters. Blanche won over Republican holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis — and cleared the Judiciary Committee 12-10 — only by putting in writing that the fund was dead and that a related tax-immunity deal applied solely to past tax returns. That deal, stemming from the IRS settlement, could personally save Trump millions of dollars. The Guardian noted the obvious conflict: the president is receiving a deal from his own administration. Nobody in the Senate press gallery seems interested in pressing that one.
Murkowski acknowledged Blanche is "decent and capable" — her words — but is voting against him anyway over a hypothetical. The fund doesn't exist. Blanche pledged in writing to kill it. The real issue is that Blanche is Trump's former personal lawyer and the acting attorney general who might actually clean house at DOJ. That's what has the permanent Washington class spooked.
The playbook is familiar: establishment Republicans wait for a Democrat-friendly Republican to go first, then pile on with procedural concerns. Collins opposes him. Now Murkowski. If one more Republican breaks, the nomination fails and the Justice Department stays in familiar hands.
The question hanging over this isn't whether Blanche keeps his word on the fund — it's whether a Senate that confirmed plenty of attorney generals who weaponized the department against Americans will now reject one who promised to stop.
