The Republican resistance to Todd Blanche was never serious

For a brief moment late last week, it looked like acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s bid to get the word “acting” removed from his job title was in serious trouble. But that moment appears to have passed, as two key Republican senators just signalled that they will vote to move his nomination forward.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) halted Blanche’s nomination because of concerns about a $1.8 billion slush fund that Blanche helped create as the Justice Department’s acting leader, as well as some objections to a collusive deal between President Donald Trump and the IRS that could have shut down tax investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses. Both senators announced on Monday that they will no longer block the nomination.

Though these two senators, both of whom are retiring in January, did extract some minor concessions from the Justice Department in return for their votes, they objected to only a small fraction of Blanche’s efforts to transform DOJ’s lawyers into Trump’s personal advocates and enforcers. The fact that Blanche is likely to be confirmed, despite his sycophancy towards Trump, suggests that any meaningful guardrails on a weaponized Justice Department have ceased to exist.

Cornyn and Tillis both currently serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That committee, where Republicans currently have a two-vote majority, was originally scheduled to vote on Blanche’s nomination Thursday — but that vote would have failed if Cornyn and Tillis rejected the nominee. And, now, it’s likely to go ahead.

Cornyn and Tillis’ objections to Blanche were quite narrow in scope. They demanded a written order from Blanche “terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” a reference to the $1.8 billion slush fund that could be paid out to Trump’s allies, including participants in the January 6 attack on the US capitol. Blanche originally established this fund in a May 18 order. On Sunday night, he tweeted out a new document terminating his May 18th order.

Cornyn also objected to the breadth of settlement between Trump and the IRS — which could be read to permanently cut off that agency’s power to audit Trump, his companies, or many members of his family — but only sought to narrow this settlement’s scope.

For the most part, however, the two senators did not object to Blanche’s broader efforts to weaponize the Justice Department against people who’ve displeased Trump, including the use of law enforcement to cow Trump’s critics. As both DAG and as acting AG Blanche oversaw several highly dubious prosecutions brought against Trump’s perceived enemies and prominent Democrats.

A video introduced in federal court, for example, indicated that Blanche personally instructed law enforcement officers to arrest Newark’s Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka — an arrest that led a federal magistrate judge to scold DOJ for “using the immense power of the government to pursue weak cases or to make examples without sufficient cause.” Under Blanche’s oversight, the DOJ’s also brought flimsy charges against individuals like FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump for potential wrongdoing. (One minor exception: Tillis did previously pressure Blanche to drop an investigation into former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.)

So, while Cornyn and Tillis did successfully push Blanche to make some small concessions in order to secure their votes in the Judiciary Committee, neither senator appeared interested in a confrontation over Trump and Blanche’s broader efforts to transform the Department of Justice into a revenge-seeking agency. And now, it appears likely that Blanche will be confirmed — and that those efforts will continue.

What did Blanche actually agree to do in order to get Cornyn and Tillis’s votes?

Earlier this year, Trump, the Trump Organization, and Trump’s two oldest sons sued the IRS, claiming that it failed to prevent a contractor from leaking some of Trump’s tax documents. The president originally demanded a $10 billion payout from the federal government, and the lawsuit triggered widespread concerns about a conflict of interest, because Trump was both the plaintiff and the chief executive of the government he sued.

On May 18, a little over a month after Blanche became the federal government’s top lawyer, Trump (and the other plaintiffs) entered into a “settlement agreement” that did not include a $10 billion payday for Trump but that did include several provisions favorable to Trump, his family, and his companies.

Among other things, the settlement announced the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which would distribute money to an unknown group of people who claim they were unfairly targeted by previous administrations based on decisions by five individuals appointed by Blanche. It also included a provision claiming that the IRS (and potentially other federal agencies) is “FOREVER BARRED” from pursuing any claims that “have been or could have been asserted by Plaintiffs” — open-ended language which sparked fears that a wide range of potential investigations into Trump, his family, or his companies could be shut down forever.

In response to Cornyn and Tillis’s objections to this settlement, Blanche tweeted out a brief order on Monday, stating that his own May 18 order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund “is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” According to Tillis, DOJ also “acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit.”

So, Blanche walked back the specific order that he signed to establish the $1.8 billion slush fund, but he did not repudiate the part of the settlement that immunizes Trump, his two oldest sons, and the Trump Organization from many tax investigations. According to Tillis, DOJ merely said that this part of the settlement does not apply to parties (including federal agencies) that were not parties to Trump’s original lawsuit.

Though this deal appeared to have been enough to secure Cornyn and Tillis’s votes, and most likely to ensure Blanche’s confirmation in a Republican Senate, it is unlikely to placate Democrats. As Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tweeted Tuesday morning, Blanche’s new order “doesn’t prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future,” and it “leaves in place a tax-immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes on the $2.3 billion he made last year.”

And the question of whether the DOJ may bring politically motivated charges against figures like Baraka, former FBI Director James Comey, or New York Attorney General Letitia James appeared to not even be part of the deal struck between Blanche, Cornyn, and Tillis.

In fairness, one reason why the two senators exacted such meager concessions may be because they didn’t have a very strong hand to play against Trump. Because Blanche is currently the Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general, he can remain head of the Justice Department, in an acting role, for as long as Trump is president. Indeed, when negotiations between Blanche and the two senators appeared to hit an impasse late last week, Trump threatened to “keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill” if Cornyn and Tillis wouldn’t support Blanche.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Blanche’s concessions are thin gruel. His statement on the slush fund merely confirms that “there is no Fund” right now. And, under the terms of the apparent deal reached with Cornyn and Tillis, Trump, his sons, and his primary business still gain broad immunity from a wide range of tax investigations.

So, while Cornyn and Tillis may have given Trump and Blanche a brief scare, they never put up much real resistance to Trump’s nominee.