WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump said he’s willing to withdraw Todd Blanche’s nomination to be the Attorney General, for now. The Senate Judiciary Committee had to postpone a vote to advance Blanche’s nomination after two key Republicans said they have objections over the president’s tax immunity deal.
In the President’s Truth Social post Thursday, he took aim at Senators John Cornyn (R- TX) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R- NC) after they said they’ll hold out on supporting Todd Blanche’s nomination as AG. The president said: “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”
The Senate Judiciary had to postpone Thursday’s vote on advancing the acting AG’s nomination after the pair of Senators said they wanted to ensure that a deal the Justice Department made, which would grant enormous protection for Trump and his family from tax investigations, is off the table.
“Everybody was saying the 1776 fund was moot, right,” said Sen. Tillis. “And everybody is saying it’s just a few details to sort out in the audit, but why on earth is the President weighing in on this and saying ‘no’ unless someone has told him ‘you want to keep these vehicles in place because you could use them sometime. That’s a horrible [inaudible]. You can’t explain it. It’s bad policy and horrible politics for our members that are up. There’s no way I could’ve- if I were running, there’s no way I could excuse this or explain it.”
The immunity deal was part of the DOJ’s way to end the President’s lawsuit against the IRS. The other part was the President’s nearly 1.8 billion dollar “anti-weaponization fund” aimed at paying political allies of the President. Blanche announced weeks ago that the fund is off the table.
“The weaponization fund, Todd Blanche can say it’s a dead letter, but the fact of the matter is he conceded that there is a settlement agreement which creates an enforceable contract,” said Cornyn. “It could be revived at a later time if the president found a compliant Department of Justice that would revive that weaponization fund. We want to make sure that it remains dead.”
