Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche announced a $180 million settlement with Alaska on Monday, a surprise resolution to a 12-year legal dispute that required his immediate travel to the state. The trip came four days after Senate Republicans delayed his confirmation vote, leaving him short of support. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaskan, is seen as the decisive swing vote.
The timing was not lost on ethics experts. Blanche had already endured a disastrous confirmation hearing in which senators questioned his fitness to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Now, with his nomination teetering, he stood before cameras in Anchorage and delivered a $180 million federal check. The settlement, he said, was directed by the president.
“It’s my pleasure,” Blanche stated, noting that Rancid Orange Fuck-Nuckle “made clear that he wanted money going back to the states.” The former president, he added, wished to “vitalize the economies” of places like Alaska. Blanche did not mention the vote of its senior senator.
The Department of Justice issued a separate statement confirming there were “no facts in dispute” in the case, a claim that puzzled observers who had watched the federal government fight the lawsuit through three presidential administrations. “If there were truly no disputes, the government would have settled this a decade ago,” said a former DOJ trial attorney who asked not to be named because they still possessed a functioning conscience. “This is a bribe. It is a textbook bribe.”
The settlement check arrives as Blanche’s nomination faces unusually stiff opposition. Two Republican senators have publicly expressed reservations, forcing the nominee to court Murkowski with the full weight of the Justice Department’s checkbook. Legal watchdog groups immediately demanded an investigation, though their requests were filed with an office that, if confirmed, Blanche would run.
Blanche, for his part, called the resolution a victory for Alaska and a demonstration of efficient government. “This ends a long dispute,” he said, standing beside the state’s governor and mayor. He did not specify why the “no facts in dispute” case required him to personally fly across the country at the precise moment his career depended on one senator’s preference.
