Bill Cassidy

WASHINGTON – When U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy cast the deciding vote to confirm Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for attorney general, he did so after hearing support from U.S. attorneys in Louisiana, he said.

“If you’re looking for a black or white decision here, you’re not going to find it. This is a gradation of gray,” Cassidy said Sunday on CBS News “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

He could’ve gone either way, and it took a couple days of weighing pros and cons before coming to his decision, Cassidy said.

Louisiana’s senior senator had voiced reservations, as other senators had, that Blanche would politically weaponize the Department of Justice.

Cassidy’s position became decisive when two fellow GOP senators – Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, and Susan Collins, of Maine – announced they were voting “nay.” Some of Blanche’s critics had hoped Cassidy, who will soon leave the Senate after Trump helped Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Baton Rouge, unseat him, would join the duo.

But Blanche was confirmed, 50-49, early Saturday morning after hours of negotiations.

Cassidy noted that he wasn’t an attorney and, as most senators do when weighing controversial decisions, he sought advice from others.

He looked to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and checked in with U.S. Attorneys Kurt Wall, of Baton Rouge, and David Courcelle in New Orleans, Cassidy said.

Wall and Courcelle told Cassidy how Justice was operating under Blanche, who has been running the department on an interim basis since Pam Bondi was fired in April, Cassidy said.

He said he was told that federal prosecutors in Louisiana and across the nation have been has focused on fighting violent crime, human and drug trafficking as well as rooting our fraud in government agencies. And the department provides extra resources and clear metrics to judge how well individual prosecutors are performing.

“Our morale is up, not despite the accountability, because of the accountability,” Cassidy said. “There’s a lot of positive things to say about Todd Blanche.”

Weighing against those positives was Trump’s efforts to establish a taxpayer funded $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” to compensate conservatives who felt unfairly targeted by federal law enforcement. As Trump’s lawyer, Blanche created the fund to settle a tax dispute Trump and his family were having — giving them immunity from future audits.

Cassidy said giving the Trump protection from tax probes is “totally wrong.”

“No American should be targeted by the law, but no American should be above the law, and that, frankly, almost weighed to vote ‘no’,” Cassidy said.

Cassidy said he sought the advice of Cornyn, who was one of the leading Republican senators raising questions about the weaponization fund and audits. In addition to having been an attorney general in Texas, Cornyn had been a state district in San Antonio and a Texas Supreme Court justice.

After negotiating with Cornyn, Blanche agreed to ensure the anti-weaponization fund would not go forward.

Opponents fear that Blanche’s assurances were not the stake-through-the-heart they wanted to see for the fund. But Cornyn was satisfied, and that was persuasive for Cassidy.

Cornyn, along with Cassidy, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, are the three GOP incumbents whose reelections Trump actively worked against. As lame ducks, the three have pushed back on Trump positions, which most Republicans avoid.

It was the second time Cassidy has been the deciding vote for approving one of Trump’s controversial selections to join the cabinet.

Cassidy is responsible for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acquiring just enough votes to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee and a physician who strongly endorses the use of vaccines to avoid life-threatening maladies, Cassidy’s support for Kennedy, a vaccine-skeptic, was critical.

But that was back when Cassidy was running for a third, six-year term against the headwinds of Louisiana Republicans angered at his vote to convict Trump of impeachment charges of inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Cassidy was twice censured by members of the state’s GOP, was forced to run in a closed primary where only Republican voters had a say, and was the target of personal attacks by Trump.

He lost in the May 16 closed party primary and will leave office in January when the newly elected 120th Congress is sworn in.