The second day of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing continued Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee as witnesses including Jennifer Bos and Danielle Bensky testified, and Sen. Thom Tillis said he will withhold his vote to advance Blanche unless Blanche meets with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse.
Republicans had planned to hear from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Adler and Jennifer Bos; Ashcroft served under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, Adler is president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association and Bos has advocated for tough immigration policies following the 2025 murder of her daughter, Hannah Akey, a spokesperson for Judiciary Republicans, said the trio will shed light on Blanche's "historic work to bring down violent crime, support our nation’s men and women in blue and turn back the tide on the Biden administration’s soft-on-crime, open border policies."
Jennifer Bos, the Antioch, Illinois, mother whose daughter was murdered, voiced her support for Blanche at the hearing and has argued for stricter immigration policy in the wake of her daughter's death.
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said they would press Blanche on his record as the president's former personal lawyer, including the rollout of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the thwarted launch of the nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund; they called Danielle Bensky, a survivor of Epstein's sex crimes, and former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer and planned to question Blanche about his trip to Florida last summer to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and the prison transfer that followed.
Danielle Bensky gave emotional testimony before the committee, describing safety and privacy concerns, job loss and reputational harm she said resulted from the Justice Department's release of the Epstein files.
Some key Republican senators remained undecided on whether to appoint Blanche to the permanent role as attorney general.
On July 15, 2026, Blanche acknowledged redaction errors in the release of the Epstein files, calling them "mistakes," and faced intense questioning during his confirmation hearing.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams issued an order sharply criticizing Blanche's handling of the Trump suit against the Internal Revenue Service and said Blanche could face discipline for his role in the settlement; Williams demanded "monetary sanctions" against President Donald Trump and ordered that her opinion be sent to the State Bar of New York and the District of Columbia for potential disciplinary proceedings, writing that the Justice Department "seems to have purposefully adopted the strategy of creating a 'slush fund disguised as a settlement, and then doling the money out to whatever constituency the Executive wants bankrolled,'" and saying the settlement included an agreement barring the IRS from auditing Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization over past tax returns.
Blanche opened the hearing by telling senators he is committed to "restoring American trust" in the Justice Department and accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the law against President Trump and many Republican lawmakers, saying "We are fixing that."
Blanche said he would operate the Justice Department with the goal of protecting Americans but, as a member of the executive branch, he reports to the president; he also insisted he was not a "yes man" to the president while saying that Mr. Trump remains his boss, and during questioning he told Sen. John Kennedy, "I'm his lawyer," then quickly corrected himself to say, "was his lawyer, and now I'm the deputy attorney general."
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pressed Blanche over the uneven rollout of the Epstein files and Blanche's role in the Trump settlement, saying, "This nation deserves an Attorney General who loves the Constitution more than he loves the President. An Attorney General who is focused on keeping Americans safe and combating corruption — not satisfying the grifter-in-chief’s personal grievances and filling his bank accounts." Durbin also said Blanche had told him in a courtesy meeting before the hearing that the Trump administration's $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund was "a mistake" and that he would be willing to work with Congress to codify that the fund cannot be created.
Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, defended Blanche and called the current Justice Department "the most responsive" he has worked with, saying the department since January 2025 "produced approximately 43,000 pages of records" in response to requests from the Senate and House.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said he wants Acting Attorney General Blanche to testify in the panel's Jeffrey Epstein investigation "as soon as possible," and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Oversight Committee's top Democrat, said Blanche must answer members' questions "immediately" about the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files; Comer said Blanche could sit for a transcribed interview with the Oversight panel "as soon as his confirmation is completed."
The Oversight Committee has recently questioned former Goldman Sachs senior counsel Kathy Ruemmler, and Comer said the panel was prepared to question her about ties to Epstein and gifts she received from him; Ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi in a transcribed interview with Oversight pinned blame on Blanche for problems with the rollout of the Epstein files.
Senators hope they can confirm Blanche before they leave for the August recess, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he is "concerned" about Blanche's role in crafting a settlement between President Trump, the IRS and the Justice Department to shield Trump and his family from IRS audits and said he wants "an attorney general who will enforce the law and who won't be just a lawyer for the president." Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina earlier said he was "going into the hearings with a lean yes," linking his support to how the settlement and its provisions played out and joking about "the 1776 and get-out-of-audit-free card."
Republicans' margins on the Judiciary panel shrank after the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham; Graham's sister, Darline Graham, was appointed to serve the rest of his term, but it is unclear whether she will fill his seats on the four committees on which Graham served, including Judiciary.
Blanche has held meetings on Capitol Hill and recently toured Alaska, where he announced a nearly $200 million settlement between the Justice Department and Anchorage over a port expansion project; Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she still had some "specific follow ups," and Sen. Susan Collins said she had "not made a decision."
Blanche predicted last week that he would field questions from senators about the anti-weaponization fund and told House members last month that the Justice Department was "not moving forward" with the program, but he declined to put that commitment in writing, and the Justice Department rebuffed a federal judge's request for Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to sign a sworn declaration attesting to the status of the $1.8 billion fund.
Prior to Pam Bondi's departure from the Justice Department, Blanche served as deputy attorney general, where he oversaw the day-to-day operations of the department; he was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 52 to 46 as deputy attorney general and took the helm of the Justice Department as acting attorney general following Bondi's removal in April, and he was deeply involved in early charging decisions aligned with the president's priorities, the department's handling of the Epstein files and the mass firings and resignations of department employees.
In a letter earlier this month, more than 1,200 former Justice Department employees with the group Justice Connection urged the committee to vote against Blanche, saying he had fired or overseen the firings of hundreds of employees "usually without notice, and for improper, unlawful reasons." Blanche criticized many of those who signed the letter for having "worked with [former special counsel] Jack Smith." This week, a group of Epstein victims released a video urging the Senate to block Blanche because their personal information was made public by the Justice Department in the release of files that victims say should have been redacted.
Blanche is also likely to face questions about federal prosecutions and investigations of former and current officials whom President Trump often attacks, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former CIA Director John Brennan; both Comey and James were the subject of prosecutions that were tossed out in November after a judge ruled that the interim U.S. attorney who brought the cases had been unlawfully appointed, and Comey was indicted again in April on charges related to an Instagram post and is set to be arraigned in September.
At the hearing Blanche repeatedly told members that the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund he helped launch was "dead," but some Republicans said they remained unconvinced; after the hearing Sen. John Cornyn said, "I don't have to make a decision until the vote is called, so I'm not ready to make the decision now," and added that "I feel no pressure" to support Blanche at this time.
Afterward Cornyn said Blanche conceded that settlement agreements are contracts and that President Trump could bring a lawsuit to enforce them, keeping alive the possibility that elements of the settlement and the fund could be revived.
Sen. Thom Tillis said Thursday that he expects Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors before Tillis is willing to vote to advance the nomination out of committee, saying, "I expect that meeting to occur before I'm willing to vote out of this committee and I’m trying to get to 'yes,' but this is a very important part of getting to 'yes,'" and committee members say that meeting should occur before July 30, the likely date the Senate Judiciary Committee will reconvene to vote on whether to report Blanche's nomination to the full Senate; committee math means the nomination would fail to advance to the Senate floor if one Republican on the Judiciary Committee defects, assuming all Democrats oppose him.
Blanche was not present at Thursday's hearing, having answered lawmakers' questions the day before, and he told reporters on Capitol Hill that he had been trying to rearrange his schedule to meet with survivors: "I've been here waiting. It didn't work out," Blanche said. "So, we're going to see if there's a way we can meet either later today or sometime soon."
Senate Majority Leader John Thune didn't rule out helping to craft legislation to formally terminate the anti-weaponization fund to satisfy senators such as Tillis and Cornyn, saying, "A lot of it would depend on where our conference is and if the president is going to sign it obviously."
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Blanche would agree to meet with the survivors in response to Tillis' demand.
Critics in both parties feared the fund was intended to pad the pockets of President Trump's supporters, and during the hearing Blanche apologized for what he called "a mistake in about 1% of the documents."