Trump's attorney general pick Todd Blanche clears critical hurdle as Senator Grassley rips into unruly Republicans for chaos: 'It's a crime'

Senate lawmakers voted along party lines Tuesday to advance President Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche, out of committee to the full Senate floor for a vote - capping weeks of negotiation that threatened his path to confirmation.

The 12-10 vote caps a weeks-long standoff with Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, two outgoing GOP senators that conditioned their 'yes' votes on DOJ's written agreement to limit Trump's sweeping tax audit settlement and end a controversial 'anti-weaponization' fund that would allocate $1.8 billion to victims of so-called ‘lawfare’ under previous administrations.

But lawmakers remained sharply divided over whether the DOJ settlement went far enough.

The top Democrat on the panel, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Tuesday that the anti-weaponization fund could theoretically be revived ‘15 minutes' after Blanche's confirmation vote. 

And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, acknowledged he and others on the panel shared in his colleagues' concerns about the anti-weaponization fund and the IRS settlement, describing them both as ‘common sense.’

‘I don't think it should have taken as long as it did to get it resolved,’ he said. ‘I don't have any way of knowing everybody that was involved in it, but it's just a crime that it took so long to work out,’ Grassley said. 

The vote comes after weeks of negotiation between the Trump administration and two outgoing Republican senators, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who withheld their 'yes' votes until DOJ agreed in writing to end a controversial 'anti-weaponization' fund and limit the scope of a sweeping IRS audit settlement for Trump and his family.