The Senate voted early Sunday morning to elevate acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the permanent post after a key Republican holdout, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, salvaged Blanche’s confirmation.

Blanche was narrowly confirmed 50-49, with all but two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voting to install him at the helm of the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

Collins said she opposed Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who has served as acting attorney general since April, because of “several actions” he took that she said “eroded” the department’s political independence. Murkowski cited the Justice Department’s botched release of the files of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and its targeting of Trump’s enemies, among other concerns.

Their decisions left the confirmation dangling by one vote until Cassidy announced in a Senate floor speech late Friday morning that he had decided to support Trump’s nominee. The senator had criticized Blanche’s creation of a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization” fund as part of a deal between Trump and the IRS over an alleged leak of his tax records.

Criticizing Blanche for “poor judgement” in creating the fund and calling Trump’s pick “not perfect,” Cassidy nevertheless said he would support the nomination.

The Trump ally’s path to the Cabinet had already faced roadblocks after two other Senate Republicans, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, refused to refer Blanche out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without documentation that the payout fund had been terminated. They dropped their objections after Blanche delivered two documents, which the senators said met their demands, paving the way for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s party-line approval of his nomination on Aug. 4.

Critics have derided the plan as a “slush fund” meant to compensate the Jan. 6, 2021, defendants who have claimed political persecution by the federal government. Trump issued sweeping pardons for all of the more than 1,500 rioters, including those who faced federal charges of seditious conspiracy and assault on law enforcement, when he returned to the White House last year.

Though Cornyn and Tillis were satisfied enough to lend their votes, legal experts still have concerns — about the fund and immunity that the settlement affords to Trump, his family and businesses. Blanche issued an order saying that the fund is “rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” He did not, however, specify that the order would be withdrawn permanently, meaning there is a possibility the DOJ could try to revive the fund in the future. Trump, too, has raised that possibility and downplayed the significance of the concessions Blanche gave the retiring lawmakers.

Survivors of Epstein lobbied lawmakers to reject Blanche’s nomination over the handling of the files. The survivors said that at a meeting with them — which he would not agree to for many months — Blanche was “very condescending,” would not answer their questions about why the Justice Department had not followed up on investigative leads and told them to “get to the point.”

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