Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana announced Friday that he will support Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general on a permanent basis, ending weeks of uncertainty over whether President Donald Trump’s nominee would survive an erosion of GOP support.

Cassidy, who is retiring next year after a bruising Republican primary loss to his Trump-backed rival, said in a highly anticipated speech on the Senate floor Friday, “I will vote for Mr. Blanche.” His support officially handed Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, enough votes to permanently secure a spot in Trump’s Cabinet.

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

It was not immediately clear when the Senate would hold a vote on Blanche’s confirmation. Senate leaders had hoped to hold Blanche’s confirmation vote this week before the upper chamber heads home for its August recess. But after Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and  Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced they would not support him, the acting attorney general could only afford to lose one more Republican senator and still be confirmed.

That left the fate of his confirmation in the hands of Cassidy, with ailing Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., still absent from the upper chamber after being discharged from a rehab facility earlier this week. 

Cassidy said he had spoken with Blanche a number of times since his nomination was narrowly referred out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 12-10 party-line vote on Aug. 4.

That vote came after Blanche assuaged the concerns of two other Senate Republicans — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — who refused to support Blanche’s nomination without formal documentation that the $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of a settlement deal between Trump and the IRS over the alleged leak of the president’s tax records was dead. The pair also demanded Blanche narrow a provision of the settlement that afforded immunity to Trump, his family and his businesses from future IRS audits.

After several days of tense rhetoric and closed-door negotiations, Blanche delivered documents that addressed the lawmaker’s demands — narrowly skirting the withdrawal of his nomination.

Before pledging his support on Friday, Cassidy had raised concerns over the perceived “politicization” of the Justice Department under Blanche’s watch. The senator said Blanche “showed poor judgment” in establishing the fund, which critics labeled a “slush fund” meant to compensate the Jan. 6, 2021, defendants who have claimed they were politically persecuted by the federal government for their actions that day. 

“No American should be unfairly targeted by the law, but no American should be above the law,” Cassidy said.

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

“A never-ending cycle of prosecuting political enemies undermines the rule of law, degrades the public’s trust in our institutions, and makes our politics more extreme when we need to unite to solve the big problems of our time,” Cassidy said. “I’m not entirely satisfied where this is, and I have no doubt that I’ll have concern in the future.”

Blanche has also come under fire from Republicans in the upper chamber for his handling of the release of files related to investigations of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse have decried Blanche and the DOJ for improperly redacting their private information in the files. They also slammed Blanche over his behavior in a private meeting that followed his confirmation hearing.

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