Washington — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday advanced Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general to the Senate floor, clearing a key hurdle for President Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department.
The GOP-led panel voted 12-10 along party lines to advance Blanche’s nomination. The acting attorney general overcame skepticism from Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina over the $1.8 billion fund designed to compensate victims of alleged “weaponization” by the government and earned their support.
The concerns from Tillis and Cornyn over the program and a sweeping deal to grant the president immunity from tax audits threatened to derail Blanche’s nomination. But late Sunday, following weeks of negotiations with the senators, Blanche issued a new order that rescinded his initial directive creating the “anti-weaponization” fund and clarified that the immunity provision covers only potential audits of previous years’ tax returns and applies only to Mr. Trump, his two oldest sons and the Trump Organization.
The order from Blanche does not modify the terms of the settlement agreement that Mr. Trump reached with the IRS in May to resolve a civil lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor. The president has continued to express support for the “anti-weaponization” fund and threatened Saturday to revive it if Cornyn and Tillis opposed Blanche as attorney general.
Still, Cornyn and Tillis said in a joint statement Monday that they are “pleased” with the formal order ending the fund. The Justice Department’s acknowledgement of the limits of the tax immunity deal addresses concerns from multiple GOP colleagues, the two senators said.
“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 remarks during the Judiciary Committee’s hearing, the two senators defended the terms they laid out in order to support Blanche’s nomination and the commitments they secured from the Justice Department.
“Given this agreement with Mr. Blanche, I expect the department to live up to this in future litigation,” Cornyn said, adding that his vote to advance Blanche’s nomination “goes beyond this document. We need a stabilizing force at the Department of Justice and Mr. Blanche deserves the opportunity to provide that.”
The department, he said, “does not need a temporary, unconfirmed nominee as our nation’s top law enforcement officer.”
With Blanche’s nomination for attorney general advancing out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it heads to the full Senate for a vote. A simple majority is needed to confirm him to the post.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, thanked Cornyn and Tillis for working with the Justice Department to address concerns about Mr. Trump’s immunity deal with the IRS and the “anti-weaponization” fund.
“It’s just common sense, what Tillis and Cornyn are asking out of the executive branch of government,” he said, adding “it’s a crime that it took so long” to secure clarifications on the limits of the tax deal.
Grassley said that since Blanche took the helm of the Justice Department in a temporary capacity, it has “thrived under his leadership.”
“Today, I’m not only voting to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination, I’m voting for the safety of the American people,” he said.
But Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel, said Blanche “has no business” leading the Justice Department, and he accused the acting attorney general of attempting to reshape the department by firing longtime officials and replacing them “with unqualified MAGA loyalists who will rubber-stamp President Trump’s corruption.”
“His word is not enough for most, not even for some of my Republican friends. Even his word under oath is not credible enough,” Durbin said, highlighting demands from senators that Blanche commit his promises to writing.
The Illinois Democrat stressed that Blanche’s new orders regarding the settlement agreement between Mr. Trump and the IRS are not signed by the parties — which include the president’s two oldest sons and the Trump Organization — and are therefore “unenforceable.” The president and his sons could still sue to enforce the original terms of the deal, and the “anti-weaponization” fund can be revived shortly after Blanche is confirmed, Durbin warned.
“To my Republican colleagues, you gave Mr. Blanche the benefit of the doubt when you supported his nomination to be deputy attorney general,” he said. “Seventeen months later, there is no doubt where his loyalty will lie.”
Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi was removed as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in April. Mr. Trump nominated Blanche for attorney general in June.
A former personal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump, Blanche came under scrutiny from members of the Judiciary Committee over the Justice Department’s handling of the release of files related to the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his meeting last year with Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and the department’s settlement with Mr. Trump to resolve his civil lawsuit against the IRS.
That deal included the creation of the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that would provide payments to people who claimed they were targeted by the federal government for political reasons. The Justice Department also had agreed to grant Mr. Trump immunity from IRS audits and investigations related to prior tax returns.
Blanche had said before that the Justice Department is not moving forward with the “anti-weaponization” program, but until Sunday, he declined to confirm in writing that it was dead, raising questions as to whether it could be revived in a different form.
When pressed by senators during his confirmation hearing about the status of the fund, Blanche said it’s “dead” and “doesn’t exist anymore.” But in written responses to senators, he declined to provide information about discussions within the Justice Department about the program.
With Republicans controlling 12 of the 22 seats on the Judiciary Committee, Cornyn and Tillis were key votes for Blanche to secure.
Tillis said earlier this month that Blanche needed to meet with survivors of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation before he voted to advance his nomination out of the Judiciary Committee. The acting attorney general met with a group of survivors at the Justice Department and said the meeting was “productive.”
But the group continued to urge Cornyn and Tillis to vote against Blanche’s nomination, saying in a letter to the senators that during their meeting with the acting attorney general, he “showed no remorse for the horrific release of materials that exposed survivors’ identities and images.” They also said he “gave no indication that he believed there were investigative leads worth pursuing, or that he intended to seek accountability beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Blanche was serving as deputy attorney general when the Justice Department released more than 3 million pages of documents from its investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes. The files’ disclosure was required under a federal law called the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
But some of the records contained survivors’ unredacted names and personal information. Blanche acknowledged “mistakes” were made by the Justice Department in its failure to shield survivors’ information and said the administration worked to rectify them, including by swiftly taking documents down.
Blanche also conducted a two-day interview with Maxwell last year, during which he asked Maxwell about her relationship with Epstein and other powerful people in his orbit. Shortly after their meeting, Maxwell was moved from a low-security federal correctional facility in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
