Trump says he will ‘push hard’ for payout fund, keep Blanche as acting AG
The president blamed two GOP senators for resisting Todd Blanche, his pick to run the Justice Department, suggesting he would resurrect his controversial “anti-weaponization” fund in response.
“It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account, vowing to pass an “Anti-Weaponization Bill” should his nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general fail in the Senate.
Trump added that he would keep Blanche as acting attorney general and blasted two GOP senators — John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) — who have blocked the nomination from advancing over concerns about the fund.
It was not immediately clear what legislation the president was referencing, and the White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s post.
The nearly $1.8 billion payout fund proposal — meant to compensate people who claim they were improperly investigated by the government — has drawn rare bipartisan backlash from Congress, with Democrats deriding it as a taxpayer-backed “slush fund” to reward Trump’s allies and some Republicans raising fears that money could go to those who attacked police during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Justice Department announced the proposal in May as part of a deal its struck between it and Trump to resolve his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns to the media. But amid pushback from lawmakers, Blanche has repeatedly declared since then that plans for the fund are dead.
Yet Trump twice undermined Blanche’s promises this week, as Blanche’s nomination stalled in the Senate, first suggesting the fund was alive, and later conceding that it was dead but that he very much wished it weren’t.
After Trump’s threat on Saturday, Tillis said it was now clear the president intends to resurrect the “payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against.”
“It’s unfortunate that Todd Blanche, who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal,” Tillis wrote on social media.
Tillis and Cornyn have emerged as the critical obstacles to confirming Blanche. The senators, who are not in the running for reelection after clashing with the White House, have said they won’t back down until the Trump administration commits to limiting the scope of the president’s deal with the Justice Department, including codifying in writing that plans for the payout fund won’t move forward.
The federal judge who was overseeing Trump’s lawsuit denounced it in a recent ruling as an illegitimate legal dispute, given that the president’s attorneys and the Justice Department lawyers representing the IRS both ultimately reported to Trump and were not actually opposed. She accused the parties of improperly attempting to “manipulate” the court process by using the suit as pretext to come up with a questionable deal, which was reached without court approval.
Trump’s lawyers announced Friday they will appeal that ruling — a move that has only further muddied the issue while Cornyn’s and Tillis’s standoff with the administration has left Blanche’s Senate-confirmation prospects in limbo.
The Justice Department and the senators spent much of last week swapping proposals and counterproposals that would alter the deal.
While Cornyn and Tillis at several points expressed optimism that they were moving toward an agreement with Blanche and the Justice Department, each time, they said, those talks were derailed by the White House.
“I think as far as Blanche and the Department of Justice, we were pretty much on the same page,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday. “But then when the president got wind of it, he wasn’t.”
The matter could come to a head next week. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced late Friday he was rescheduling the committee vote on Blanche’s nomination for Tuesday. A statement from his office suggested the move was an effort to buy “more time for the White House to secure votes for the President’s nominee.”
Meanwhile, the Senate is unlikely to heed Trump’s calls for legislation establishing the payout fund through an act of Congress.
Senate Republicans revolted when the Justice Department announced the fund in May. To protest it, lawmakers left Washington without passing legislation to fund immigration enforcement agencies. The Senate only passed the bill once Blanche testified that plans to set up the fund were dead.
Concern about the fund continues to run deep among Senate Republicans; a dozen of them voted for a failed amendment offered by Tillis in June that would have barred any federal funds from being used in connection with the fund.
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