By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-08-05 03:45:50 | Updated at 2026-08-06 00:56:02
1 day ago
The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general to the Senate floor on Tuesday in a 12-10 vote.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) can schedule a vote to confirm Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April, before the full Senate.
Blanche advanced out of committee with the support of outgoing Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX), who held up the nomination until Blanche rescinded an order that had established an Anti-Weaponization Fund on Sunday. The order was rescinded on Sunday night.
Cornyn said he was holding up the nomination as leverage to force the $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, which was established via a settlement in a lawsuit between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to be rescinded. The fund was established “to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
He said Tuesday that the “document will help limit the substance and scope of the audit protection to the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, and… it limits the parties to the audit settlement to the plaintiffs, the people who brought the lawsuit, and no one else.”
“Given this agreement with Mr. Blanche, I expect the department to live up to this in future litigation, and I will vote to advance him out of the committee today,” he said.
President Donald Trump said that Cornyn had held up the nomination as retribution after Trump endorsed his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in the race for the Republican nomination in the Lone Star State’s U.S. Senate race several months ago.
“Todd Blanche is a very, very good man, and he shouldn’t be in the middle of this. He should get approved because you will never get anybody like him. You’re never going to get anybody. And to make him a pawn in this whole thing,” Trump told reporters at a Cabinet meeting Friday.
“This is being done by a senator. And I don’t really blame him, to be honest with you. I endorsed his opponent, and as soon as I endorsed his opponent, his opponent went through the roof, and he won the primary election in Texas for the Senate,” he added.
Trump also said the fund would be for “people that have been weaponized” and that he does not “want anything.”
“There’s essentially never been a group of people treated so badly as these people, and this fund, this fund was not for me,” he said.
“This fund was for those people that have been weaponized, that have been abused,” he added.
