Several days have elapsed since the confirmation hearing of Todd Blanche to be attorney general last Wednesday and Thursday, but the Judiciary Committee chair, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, still has not scheduled a vote. That’s because Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is far from a yes, and it will take only a single Republican no vote in committee to sink the nomination.
Cornyn was plainly dissatisfied with Blanche’s refusal to put in writing that the so-called anti-weaponization fund, created as part of a sweetheart deal to immunize President Trump, his family members, and businesses against IRS audits, was truly dead. Cornyn drew an admission from Blanche that Trump could still sue to enforce the deal.
“I’m not going to make a decision until I have to,” Cornyn told reporters after Wednesday’s hearing. “I was pointing out that the weaponization fund, which people were concerned about, is not really dead. He says it is, but he admitted that it could be enforced because this is, essentially, a contract, and it hadn’t been modified by the parties in writing, which is required to change the settlement agreement.”
Blanche, as Trump’s former personal lawyer and as acting attorney general, was on both sides of the corrupt deal, as was Trump. Blanche did himself no favors at the hearing when he responded to a softball question from Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who asked whether Blanche considered Trump a friend. “I’m his lawyer,” Blanche replied, instantly correcting himself to add, “was his lawyer.”
The reek of the deal, and Blanche’s role in it, was reinforced in an opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams, in a blistering 56-page ruling released on the eve of the hearings. Blanche’s capacity to speak for both sides of the lawsuit and sign a settlement agreement on behalf of all parties, wrote the judge, “demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout the case.” She added, “It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the parties.”
The whole lawsuit, wrote Williams, was “non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper.” Williams had her ruling sent to the State Bar of New York, where more than 100 former federal and state judges have filed a 73-page ethics complaint against Blanche related to this case, as well as the political prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, and Blanche’s “botched” handling of the Epstein files.
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A second Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who also has nothing to fear from Trump since he is not running for re-election, indicated that he was basically satisfied with Blanche’s performance, but had some lingering concerns about Blanche’s role in redacting information in the Epstein files, which Congress had ordered released. To appease Tillis, Blanche agreed to meet with some survivors of Epstein’s sexual predation. Reportedly, the meeting did not go well, but it gave Tillis the cover he needed to vote to advance Blanche’s nomination.
So this leaves Cornyn. A question is why senators whose careers were ended by Trump, who plainly loathe Trump, and who have nothing to fear from Trump, would hesitate before voting down a Trump nominee.
One answer was provided by former Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, a Trump critic who declined to run for re-election and put out the word that he feared for his personal safety. Romney was not being paranoid. Last week, as Blanche was preparing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett were testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee, to request increased security funding following a 57 percent surge in threats against federal judges. Nationwide, the U.S. Marshals Service investigated 512 threats to judges in the past fiscal year. Some judges are now wearing bulletproof vests.
Whatever is motivating Cornyn to hesitate, he knows that the Blanche nomination is a travesty of justice. We’ll see whether he can be intimidated.
