Senate Judiciary Committee Advances Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Nomination

Todd Blanche went from personal defense lawyer to Trump's courtroom advocate to now clearing the Senate Judiciary Committee on his way to running the Justice Department. That is not a normal résumé, and everyone knows it. But normal is not the standard here. Competence and loyalty to the actual job are, and so far nothing in this process suggests Blanche is unfit to do it.

The predictable line is that a man who spent months arguing his client's innocence in a Manhattan courtroom cannot now be trusted to run DOJ impartially. Fine, let's hear the case against him on the merits instead of the résumé alone. Committee votes are where that case gets made or falls apart, and it fell apart enough to get him through. If Democrats had something beyond "he defended the president," they'd have used it.

What actually matters is whether Blanche restores some sanity to a department that spent years chasing Trump through multiple jurisdictions while letting other matters go conveniently quiet. If his experience means he understands exactly how prosecutorial power got weaponized these past four years, that's not a conflict of interest. That's the point of picking him.

The confirmation isn't finished, and there will be more theater on the floor. But a committee vote is a real signal, not a rubber stamp, and it moved. That's the story today, however much some senators wanted it to go differently.