Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said on Thursday he will not vote to confirm acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as the permanent head of the Department of Justice.
The admission is notable, considering Fetterman sometimes votes in favor of Trump nominees during the Senate confirmation process. Last year, he was the sole Democrat to back the confirmation of Pam Bondi as attorney general. That will not be the case for Blanche.
“I would not vote for him,” the senator told NewsNation outside the U.S. Capitol.
Fetterman suggested his reservations about the acting attorney general were related to the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund abandoned by the DOJ this week.
“It seems like it’s not going anywhere,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said of congressional opposition to the fund. “There’s no votes for that. This slush fund, or whatever you want to call it, it’s a bizarre thing.”
“I don’t know why you would introduce that when you’re in the middle of really important questions about the Iranian war and those other things,” he added. “I don’t think we need any of those kind of distractions.”
President Donald Trump indicated on Wednesday that his administration will move to nominate Blanche as the full-time attorney general as soon as Thursday. No official announcement has been made yet.
Blanche said he was “honored and humbled” by the president’s decision. The DOJ official attended the White House dinner when Trump revealed he wanted Blanche to be the permanent attorney general.
“I was confirmed a year ago to be the deputy attorney general,” Blanche told reporters on Thursday. “I still am the deputy attorney general. I will work with the senators. I have a good relationship with the Senate on both sides. I don’t say no to phone calls.”
Blanche was confirmed to be deputy attorney general on a party-line vote in the Senate, with Fetterman voting against his confirmation at the time.
Besides Fetterman, senators on both sides of the aisle have expressed consternation regarding Blanche’s expected nomination.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) immediately indicated he would not vote to confirm Blanche, calling him a Trump “crony” and “loyalist” while urging him to resign from the DOJ entirely. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) felt similarly.
“Trump picked Blanche because he’s loyal to the president alone, not the Constitution, not the rule of law, and certainly not to the American people, and not to the values that this country has had for 250 years,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
TRUMP COULD KEEP TODD BLANCHE ATOP DOJ EVEN IF SENATE CONFIRMATION STALLS
On the Republican side, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) said they haven’t made a decision on Blanche’s confirmation yet. For Tillis’s vote, the acting attorney general’s views on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot are essential.
“The key for Todd or anybody going through the Judiciary Committee is being pretty tight on Jan. 6,” Tillis said. “They better not have said for one minute that the people that beat up police officers like these right down here were righteous people. You come even close to saying that, you don’t have a prayer of my vote in judiciary.”