Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) says he will step onto the Senate floor at 10:40 a.m. ET Friday to reveal whether he'll sink President Donald Trump's attorney general nominee, with the confirmation appearing to hinge entirely on his answer.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have already said they'll vote no, leaving Cassidy as the last known undecided Republican standing between Todd Blanche and the job. If he joins them while Sen. Mitch McConnell stays sidelined after his June hospitalization, Blanche's nomination would fail, 49-50.
Blanche, currently the acting attorney general and a Senate-confirmed deputy AG, is best known as the controversial lawyer who defended Trump in his New York criminal trial. Collins and Murkowski have each pointed to what they describe as the growing politicization of the Justice Department under the current administration, and McConnell has not voted since a June hospitalization, thinning the GOP's margin. Should Blanche's nomination collapse, he would become the first Cabinet nominee rejected by the Senate since John Tower's failed 1989 bid to run the Pentagon.
Cassidy, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial, has said for weeks that he needed to be convinced Blanche will serve as the nation's top law enforcement officer rather than the president's personal attorney.
"I've got to be convinced that he is an attorney general who just happens to have once been President Trump's personal attorney, as opposed to President Trump's personal attorney who is now the attorney general," he told SiriusXM this week.
