Over the weekend, it looked as if President Trump had backed himself into a corner in his efforts to get Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was recently primaried by Trump ally Ken Paxton yet remains a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the rest of the year, wasn’t budging in his insistence that Blanche commit in writing to killing the corrupt deal in which the government set up a $1.776 billion slush fund to compensate supposed victims of government violence and Trump personally got immunity from IRS audits.
Trump himself poured oil on the flames in a series of comments and social media posts in which he walked back his previous commitment to end the slush fund and further insulted Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was following Cornyn’s lead.
Tillis, who had previously signaled his support for Blanche, then posted a withering comment on X: “Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks …”
The two holdout senators had little to lose. Both are leaving Congress this year. Both were dispatched in part by Trump’s hostility. Trump made clear that he would not support Tillis’s re-election, so Tillis decided to retire. Trump explicitly endorsed Cornyn’s challenger, despite Cornyn’s decade-long record of dogged loyalty to Trumpism.
So quite apart from principled objections to the deal, there is little love lost between the two lame-duck senators and Trump. But then, Sunday night, the waves parted. After extended conversations with Blanche, Cornyn agreed to support his nomination. And the details of the deal reeked.
Though Blanche posted on social media a signed memo formally rescinding the order that created the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” he left most of the IRS deal intact. Trump still gets full immunity from IRS audits of past tax returns, and the scope of the immunity is narrowed to protect “only” Trump, the Trump Organization, and two of his sons. And once Blanche is confirmed, some version of the slush fund could be resurrected at any time.
Somehow, disgracefully, this satisfied Cornyn and Tillis. It’s far from clear, however, that it will satisfy U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams. Back in May, Judge Williams voided an earlier version of the IRS deal. In a scathing ruling on July 13, she threatened a formal ethics complaint against Blanche for conflicts of interest and misrepresentations. “In sum,” she wrote, “the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail.”
The Judiciary Committee has now scheduled a vote Tuesday to advance Blanche’s nomination to the Senate floor. But this isn’t quite over.
MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER RING of the Senate circus, senators began debate Monday on a short-term resolution bill that would fund the government through December 11. The details still need to be negotiated with the House, and the Senate version excludes some administration requests such as an extra billion dollars for a presidential favorite, a “Trump-class” battleship.
One provision, negotiated at length between Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine and her Democratic counterpart, Patty Murray of Washington state, blocks OMB Director Russell Vought from finalizing a regulation that would give the White House political control over all federal grants.
Sounds like a win. But the prohibition expires with the December 11 funding patch, after which OMB is free to issue the regulation. So it’s yet another phony constraint on Trump so Collins can pretend to be a maverick independent until after the election.
I get why Collins, up for re-election and always slippery, would back this ploy. But what’s wrong with Murray and the Democrats?
