Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cleared his biggest Senate hurdle Tuesday after cutting a deal to kill a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate Americans targeted by their own government — and the permanent bureaucracy couldn't be more relieved.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to advance Blanche's nomination after two Republican holdouts extracted concessions that effectively gutted one of the few mechanisms designed to hold the weaponized justice system accountable. Every day of delay, every demand for "binding assurances," was a victory for an apparatus that has never answered for how it treats citizens who fall on the wrong side of the political aisle.
Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis announced Monday they would support Blanche after he formally killed the "anti-weaponization" fund and narrowed the scope of Trump's tax immunity agreement. In a written order issued late Sunday, Blanche confirmed no members had been appointed to administer the fund, no money had been transferred, and no claims had been paid, according to the Washington Examiner.
The fund — valued at roughly $1.8 billion — was designed to compensate people who claimed they were unfairly targeted by the DOJ. The prospect that January 6 defendants might receive payments triggered bipartisan backlash. But the deeper question is why the Senate fought so hard to prevent the government from making whole the citizens it wronged.
Cornyn and Tillis had demanded binding assurances the fund could not be revived and that IRS audit protections would not extend beyond the plaintiffs in Trump's lawsuit. The DOJ clarified the audit agreement applies retroactively to claims open when the settlement was reached, does not cover future tax filings, and is limited to Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization.
"We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon," Cornyn and Tillis said in a joint statement.
Other Republicans who shared those concerns included Sens. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, John Curtis, and Lisa Murkowski — a who's who of the chamber's moderate wing.
Democrats argued the agreement doesn't go far enough. Sen. Adam Schiff said Sunday the deal "doesn't prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future" and leaves questions about the breadth of Trump's tax protections, the Examiner reported.
USA Today framed the fund and the tax immunity agreement as self-dealing by Trump, noting Blanche is Trump's former personal criminal defense lawyer and that the immunity deal came after Trump filed a lawsuit against the IRS. What USA Today buried: the fact that the DOJ under previous leadership systematically targeted political opponents, which is precisely what the fund was meant to address.
Both Cornyn and Tillis are on their way out — Cornyn lost his primary to a Trump-backed candidate and Tillis decided not to run for re-election, USA Today noted. Lame-duck senators extracting concessions from a president their own voters rejected: that's the permanent class at work.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley scheduled Tuesday's meeting to give the White House more time to secure votes, praising Blanche's record of "restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe." A successful committee vote would position Blanche for confirmation by the full Senate before the August recess.
Blanche will likely get confirmed. But the fund is dead, and the question of who in the permanent bureaucracy will ever answer for weaponizing the justice system against Americans remains wide open. The Senate made sure of that.
