By SUZANNE DOWNING
Aug. 7, 2026 – Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she will vote against President Donald Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche to lead the Justice Department, a sharp contrast with the Alaska Republican’s willingness to help install the officials who ran the department during the Biden administration.
Murkowski announced Friday that she does not have confidence Blanche would “check the worst impulses of this administration.” She cited the department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, immunity provisions involving Trump and his family, and what she described as the targeting of former administration officials and sitting senators.
Update: Blanche’s nomination has passed the Senate without Murkowski’s vote of support.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, is currently serving as acting attorney general. Murkowski joins Sen. Susan Collins of Maine as the two Republicans publicly opposing his confirmation. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana announced Friday that he would support Blanche, likely giving the nominee enough votes to be confirmed with Vice President JD Vance available to break a tie.
Murkowski’s objections center on her concern that the Justice Department could become politicized under Trump. But she showed considerably less skepticism when President Joe Biden assembled the leadership team that weaponized federal law enforcement against Biden’s political opponents.
In March 2021, Murkowski voted to confirm Merrick Garland as attorney general. Garland was confirmed 70-30, with Murkowski among 20 Republicans joining Democrats in support, according to the official Senate roll call.
Murkowski also supplied the decisive Republican vote to confirm radical Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general, the No. 3 position at the Justice Department.
Republicans had spent weeks opposing Gupta, pointing to her advocacy record, statements about policing and support for decriminalizing drugs. The Republican conference was expected to remain united, and Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the Capitol prepared to cast the Biden administration’s first tie-breaking confirmation vote.
Murkowski made that unnecessary.
She broke ranks and joined all 50 Democrats to confirm Gupta 51-49, the only Republican to vote yes, allowing Democrats to portray the nomination as bipartisan. The Senate’s official record confirms both the final tally and Murkowski’s floor speech supporting Gupta.
The Garland Justice Department later became the center of allegations that federal law enforcement had been turned into a political instrument.
Garland personally approved the August 2022 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. His department appointed special counsel Jack Smith, whose office brought two federal indictments against Trump in 2023: the classified-documents case in Florida in June and the election-related case in Washington in August.
The department also faced years of criticism over its handling of the Hunter Biden investigation and prosecution. Garland’s October 2021 memorandum directing federal law enforcement to address supposed threats against school officials became another flashpoint, with parents’ groups and Republican lawmakers arguing that the federal government was intimidating citizens who objected to school policies. The memo referred specifically to threats and violence, its timing and context cast ordinary parents as potential domestic threats.
Murkowski’s support extended well beyond Garland and Gupta. She voted to confirm 19 of Biden’s first 21 Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees, opposing only Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services and one other nominee. She also became one of the Senate Republicans most willing to support Biden’s judicial selections.
In 2022, Murkowski joined Collins and Sen. Mitt Romney as the only Republicans voting to place Ketanji Brown Jackson on the US Supreme Court. Murkowski had already supported Jackson’s 2021 confirmation to the influential US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Murkowski’s overall record made her one of the Democratic president’s most dependable Republican votes on nominations.
That record now provides the backdrop for her decision to oppose Blanche.
Murkowski was willing to help Biden install Garland, Gupta, Jackson and nearly his entire opening Cabinet. Four years of Justice Department controversies followed, including unprecedented federal prosecutions of Trump, who was the leading opposition candidate and former president.
Now, with a Republican president trying to put his own choice in charge of the same department, Alaska’s senior senator has decided that concerns about politicization are grounds for a no vote.
