Todd Blanche sought to downplay his close relationship with Donald Trump, tried to distance himself from decisions regarding January 6 rioters, and defended his handling of files regarding Jeffrey Epstein as well a settlement agreement that created a $1.8bn slush fund and giving the president and his family immunity from audits during his confirmation hearing to be the next attorney general in front of the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday.

Blanche served as Trump’s personal attorney before being tapped to be the deputy attorney general – the No 2 position at the justice department at the start of last year. He has been serving as the acting attorney general since April, when Trump fired Pam Bondi, and has amped up Trump’s retribution agenda.

Blanche faces a razor-thin margin for confirmation from the committee, where he likely cannot afford to lose a single Republican vote. GOP committee members John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have been sharply critical of the slush fund agreement in the past, and Cornyn said Wednesday during a hearing break that he was “undecided” on Blanche’s nomination.

Pressed by Democratic senators on Wednesday, Blanche insisted that he does not merely do the president’s bidding and that he would resign if ever asked to do anything illegal or unethical. He also said he had disagreed at times with Trump and said he did not believe the president was eligible to run for a third term.

“President Trump trusts me to give him counsel,” Blanche said at one point. “Counsel does not mean I’m a yes man.”

Still, Blanche had a notable slip when pressed by the senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who asked whether the two men were friends. “I’m his lawyer,” Blanche said, before correcting himself. “Was his lawyer,” he said.

Few officials have been more instrumental in Trump’s crusade to transform the federal government in his second term than Blanche. He steered the department’s day-to-day work as career employees were purged over their connection to Trump investigations and the president oriented the department towards punishing political rivals and investigating debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Blanche also faced pointed questioning from Cornyn over an arrangement the justice department reached to resolve a $10bn lawsuit Trump, his sons and his businesses filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Cornyn is a lame-duck senator after losing a primary earlier this year when Trump endorsed his opponent.

Part of that settlement created a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of alleged government weaponization, a term Blanche conceded was not specifically defined. Part of the agreement also gave the president, his family, his businesses and related entities immunity from tax audits related to matters until the agreement was reached.

Facing bipartisan backlash, Blanche scrapped the fund. And a federal judge on Monday excoriated Blanche as well as the president’s other lawyers for the agreement, saying the original lawsuit was collusive and had been filed to engineer the president’s preferred outcome.

Pressed by Cornyn, Blanche conceded during the hearing on Wednesday that there was no written agreement among the parties ending the settlement and that Trump or the other plaintiffs could theoretically sue to enforce the settlement in the future.

Blanche said he was not involved in a decision to hire a former January 6 defendant at the justice department. And he said that the department’s decision to vacate the sentences of some of the January 6 defendants convicted of the most serious crimes was required after Trump granted them clemency. “I have never said that any sort of violence against law enforcement is appropriate,” he said.

Those comments were likely directed towards Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, another lame duck, who has said he will not support Blanche’s confirmation if Blanche was supportive of January 6 rioters. A single “no” vote on the committee would block Blanche’s nomination from moving forward, the New York Times reported.

During a key exchange with Tillis, Blanche said he believed any person who harmed a police officer on January 6 should have been prosecuted. Tillis seemed to be leaning towards voting in Blanche’s favor, telling him at the conclusion of his questioning he did a good job.

Blanche also danced around a question from Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, about whether the government would deploy armed agents to the polls in November – a concern among voting rights groups. “I will absolutely commit to following the law,” he said.

He also defended the conduct of FBI director Kash Patel, amid reports about his drinking habits, use of the FBI’s airplane to see his girlfriend and morale problems at the agency.

“I don’t think he has any issues drinking,” Blanche said. “I don’t think there’s any issues with morale there.”

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the committee, criticized the justice department’s handling of the Epstein files, and urged Blanche to meet with survivors. “Mr Blanche, these survivors deserve much better,” Durbin said, noting that there were several survivors of Epstein’s abuse in the audience on Wednesday. Blanche responded that if the survivors were represented by attorneys, he was prohibited from “directly meeting with them”, but said that members of his staff would meet with them.

During his testimony on Wednesday morning, Blanche defended the justice department’s handling of the files, but also acknowledged that the release contained some “mistakes”, including redaction errors that exposed identifying information about some survivors. Blanche said that the department corrected those errors as soon as they became aware of them, and said that only “1 per cent” of the files required revisions after they were released.

In May, Bondi admitted during her testimony in front of lawmakers on the House oversight and reform committee that “there were redaction errors” in the Epstein files but said that “since day one of this process, this department has been committed to accountability and transparency”.

During that same testimony, Bondi said that it was Blanche who was “in charge” of the justice department’s release of the files.

Before Blanche’s hearing this week, several Epstein survivors released a video and put up billboards urging senators not to confirm him.

In an interview with the Guardian last month, Annie Farmer, a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, said that she, and other survivors, “are very clear on the fact” that Blanche “should not become attorney general”.

“Really, it comes down to a few things” she said. “Pam Bondi was very clear that Todd Blanche was the person leading up the effort around the release of the files, and he has not taken accountability for the mistakes that were made, he has been clear that he doesn’t plan to do any investigating around the leads that are included in the files, and he has, I’d say, not been honest about his efforts to involve survivors in the process.”

Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, got Blanche to admit he “authorized” the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka last year at an ICE facility. The charges were dismissed days later.

Blanche also made headlines last year when he met with longtime Epstein companion Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges, in prison to interview her about the Epstein case.

Not long after the meeting, Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum security prison camp in Texas. The move sparked backlash, with experts calling it “unprecedented” and Democratic lawmakers noting that convicted sex offenders are not typically placed in minimum security facilities.

Blanche has defended the transfer, arguing that it was necessary for Maxwell’s safety.

Booker questioned Blanche about the transfer on Wednesday. “What is true is that someone accused of child sex trafficking under the bureau of prisons own policies, is not put in a facility like this, that seems clearly like a reward,” Booker said. Blanche later admitted it did not lead to anyone else being charged.

Blanche has overseen a department in which prosecutors and other government lawyers have been reprimanded for misrepresentations before judges. Government lawyers have long enjoyed a “presumption of regularity” – an assumption that officials are acting ethically and honestly before the court – but that seems to have evaporated.

For Blanche, his nomination as attorney general represents the pinnacle of a decision less than five years ago to bet everything on Trump. A former federal prosecutor, Blanche left a partnership at the law firm Cadwalader in 2023 to represent Trump in the criminal cases against him. Blanche, who was a registered Democrat until fairly recently, was rewarded for his loyalty with a top post in the justice department.

“In less than 18 months at the Department of Justice, you have shown you are first and foremost, still President Trump’s personal attorney. Your tenure can be summed up in just four words: ‘I love you, sir.’ This was your response when asked what you would say to President Trump,” Durbin said in his opening statement on Wednesday. “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 combatting corruption – not satisfying the grifter-in-chief’s personal grievances and filling his bank accounts. Mr Blanche, you have proven beyond a reasonable doubt you are not that person.”

More than 1,200 former justice department employees signed a letter earlier this month opposing Blanche’s confirmation.

“Since his confirmation as deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the president, not the constitution,” said Stacey Young, a former justice department attorney who is now executive director and founder of Justice Connection, a group for justice department alumni that organized the letter.

“That fealty led to the purge of thousands of experienced career employees, a loss that will have a generational impact on the justice department’s ability to carry out its mission and maintain credibility with the courts and the American people.”