Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s path to confirmation looks clearer after he formally moved to squash President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization fund” meant to compensate the Republican president’s allies.
It’s still not yet known whether Blanche will receive support from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. But Sunday’s order from the acting attorney general helped win over two GOP members, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Those two were opposed to confirming Blanche as the permanent attorney general due to the fund.
Blanche, who served as Trump’s defense lawyer in his past criminal cases, issued a formal order Sunday night to end the $1.776 billion fund. The taxpayer-funded sum would have compensated people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted during former President Joe Biden’s administration. The proposal had drawn pushback from senators on both sides of the aisle, particularly because it might have benefited rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, was among the senators who already expressed opposition to the fund. After a May hearing featuring Blanche, Collins said she would not support it and focused on legal reasons, saying no court “has approved the settlement agreement, and that is why the legal basis for the fund was my first line of questioning” for Blanche.
Collins’ office did not share comment Monday on the new order or whether she will vote to confirm Blanche in the wake of him rescinding the fund. A spokesperson said the senator and her staff were still reviewing all of the details in the order.
Sunday night’s move to nix the fund was part of a deal Blanche made with Cornyn and Tillis. Cornyn, who lost a primary this year to the Trump-backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Tillis, who is not seeking reelection this year after sparring with Trump at times, said in a statement Monday they will now support Blanche’s nomination.
“The (Justice) Department always welcomes and appreciates productive engagement with all members of Congress,” Blanche wrote in a Sunday night post on X.
Blanche cannot afford to lose much Republican support in the closely-split Senate if he wants to take on the attorney general role permanently. Republicans control the chamber, 53-47. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has not yet committed to supporting him and said she still needs to fully evaluate his nomination once it advances out of committee.
Cornyn previously said he was not the only member of his party who wanted to ensure the fund was scrapped. The standoff looked to be a major headache for Republicans facing high-stakes reelection bids this year. Collins is in a closely-watched race against former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson; Democrats and Jackson have criticized Collins for voting with Trump most of the time, and for voting to confirm a slew of Trump nominees and judges, including jurists with anti-abortion views.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, criticized the fund earlier this year as “an outrageous abuse of Americans’ taxpayer dollars.” U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree, both Democrats, each criticized its proposed creation as well.
“If Donald Trump wants to reward his political friends or the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, let him do it with his own money — he’s got plenty of it,” King said in May.
Blanche, who became acting attorney general after Trump fired Pam Bondi in April, wrote in Sunday’s order that no members had been appointed to oversee the fund, no money had been transferred and no claims had been paid out.
Various questions remain ahead of Blanche’s confirmation vote Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee — especially whether Trump and his legal team will agree to the loss of the fund. Neither Collins nor King are on the committee.
Trump said Sunday evening that people charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot who could have benefited from the fund had “their lives destroyed.”
“This would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered,” Trump said. “A lot of people like it.”
Legal experts have argued that despite the written agreement, a new order from the president’s administration in the future could resurrect the fund.
Its proposed creation in May came as Trump settled with the Internal Revenue Service over his $10 billion lawsuit related to the leak of Trump’s tax returns. The fund was just one part of the broader settlement between the U.S. government and the Trump family.
The Justice Department clarified Sunday in a second, unsigned statement the scope of another provision included in the settlement that would shield Trump, his family and his companies from tax audits or prior tax return enforcement. However, the new statement said those protections apply only retroactively and do not prevent Trump from facing examination for future tax filings.