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Todd Blanche was narrowly confirmed as US attorney-general early on Saturday morning after bipartisan fears over his independence threatened to scupper his nomination.
The Republican-led Senate voted 50-49 to make President Donald Trump’s former defence lawyer the most powerful legal official in the country.
Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against Blanche’s nomination.
Blanche, however, won the backing this week of John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, two Republican senators who had raised concerns over his short but chaotic tenure as acting attorney-general and independence from Trump.
They were exercised by Trump’s settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, including the $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund set up in exchange for the president and his family dropping a $10bn lawsuit against the federal agency.
Trump threatened to pull Blanche’s nomination over the showdown and resubmit his name next year, when Cornyn and Tillis would no longer be in Congress. But Blanche said that after “good faith discussions”, a deal was struck to “officially rescind” the fund in writing.
Blanche succeeds Pam Bondi, who was fired by Trump in April over her handling of files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was alleged that Trump was also unhappy about the slow pace of Bondi’s prosecution of political opponents.
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