WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said Friday that he would support Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general, effectively saving the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick after two other Republican senators said they would oppose him.

Cassidy, who lost his reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger, said in a speech on the Senate floor that he had deep concerns about “apparent lawfare,” the phrase he has used to refer to the Justice Department’s targeting of the president’s political enemies.

But Cassidy said that after much consideration, he had come to believe that Blanche, who has served as the president’s personal lawyer, would be better positioned to push back against Trump’s norm-busting demands than an alternative.

“Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this,” Cassidy said. “But the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general, who may not run the department effectively under President Trump.”

He announced his decision hours after Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the second Republican to oppose Blanche’s confirmation, joining Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. That threw the nominee’s fate into doubt, given that he could not afford additional Republican defectors, and intensified attention on Cassidy.

Murkowski said in a statement that she, too, harbored concerns over the “politicization” of the Justice Department. But the conclusion she reached was the opposite of Cassidy’s: She said she feared that Blanche would “fail to check the worst impulses of this administration.”

Murkowski cited the department’s handling of the release of the Epstein files, which Blanche oversaw, and the settlement agreement that Blanche negotiated in Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, which included the creation of a $1.8 billion compensation fund that could have been used to pay Jan. 6 rioters.

“The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” Murkowski said. “I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Collins, who is running for reelection in a state Trump lost in 2024, said Tuesday that she would vote against Blanche over similar concerns. Given the continued absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has been gone for nearly eight weeks because of illness, Blanche could only afford to lose two Republican votes and still win a majority for confirmation.

Murkowski, Collins and Cassidy are the only three remaining Republican senators in office who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges and remove him from office following the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

Trump had urged Senate Republicans to swiftly confirm Blanche, and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, had hoped to bring his nomination to a vote before lawmakers left Washington for their August recess.

Blanche’s nomination has had a rough road. The Judiciary Committee delayed advancing it to the full Senate after two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, raised questions about the $1.8 billion fund, which Blanche had said would not move ahead, and the extraordinary immunity from tax audits given to Trump and his businesses in his resolution of the IRS lawsuit.

After days of negotiation, Blanche on Sunday night provided written assurances that the fund was dead and that the immunity for the president would be narrowed, and Cornyn and Tillis dropped their objections.

But in her statement, Murkowski said she worried that the fund could too easily be restored after Blanche’s confirmation, a concern shared by many critics.

“I am also keenly aware that the department’s nearly $2 billion dollar slush fund — which likely would have rewarded Jan. 6 protesters — is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage,” she said. “Once we vote, that will end, and there is no telling what the future holds.”

Blanche met privately with Murkowski and Cassidy on Wednesday in the Capitol to discuss his nomination.

Like Collins, Murkowski is a supporter of abortion rights. In announcing their opposition, both of them referenced Blanche telling anti-abortion groups that he would take a hard line in enforcing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Cassidy, who has become more openly critical of the president since his election defeat in May, said his views about Trump did not factor into his decision about Blanche.

“I have a history with Mr. Trump,” he said, “but that history does not matter one bit.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Michael Gold and Carl Hulse/Alex Kent
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