Blanche nomination for attorney general advanced by US Senate panel on party-line vote

WASHINGTON — U.S. acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was one step closer to permanently leading the Justice Department Tuesday, after two skeptical Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans voted to advance his nomination given Blanche’s signed promise that President Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund is dead.

Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had been withholding support for Blanche, voted with other members of the committee along party lines, 12-10, to send Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate. It is unclear how soon the Senate will vote on the confirmation.

Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, issued a brief signed statement on social media Sunday night promising the fund is “rescinded,” and an attached unsigned memo stated the tax immunity deal for Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization only applies “retroactively.” 

Trump did not sign the documents, and the president has defended the fund in recent days.

Cornyn said ahead of the vote Tuesday he and Tillis came to an agreement with Justice Department officials on an “agency interpretive guidance document that reaffirms what Mr. Blanche said in his sworn testimony” that the tax audit immunity is limited to the parties and subject matter in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against his administration’s own IRS.

Trump voluntarily dropped the lawsuit in May in exchange for tax enforcement immunity for him, his sons Eric and Don Jr., and the Trump Organization, as well as the creation of a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that could potentially pay out to violent, but now pardoned, Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted police.

“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,” Cornyn said at the opening of Tuesday’s meeting.

Tillis said the question over the “payout pot for punks” was settled.

“I’ve never liked this 1776 fund. It made no sense to me, and I thought it was an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th. It’s done, it’s been rescinded, and I am satisfied,” Tillis said.

Tillis argued “both (sides) have a problem” and he hopes Blanche will attempt “a bending of the curve of this absurdity.”

“If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration … Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that a little bit more intense than the prior administration, and so on and so forth. But folks, we’ve got to end this stuff,” he said.

He added the “bonehead” DOJ official in North Carolina who is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey for a social media post of seashells on a beach spelling out “8647” — a nod to a restaurant kitchen term to get rid of something — “better damn sure have information to back it up because if all it is is a picture, that person should lose his or her job.” 

Dems united in opposition

All committee Democrats followed ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois in delivering remarks opposing Blanche’s nomination. 

The panel’s minority members hammered concerns about Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files and meeting with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, federal lawsuits for states’ voter records and a promise to faith leaders that the DOJ will make the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal abortion protections “permanent in every single state.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about the criticisms.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey chastised his Republican counterparts for comparing the Trump administration’s actions to the Biden administration, including President Joe Biden’s pardons of his son Hunter and other officials just hours before leaving office.

“That is like being obsessed and using a magnifying glass to study the stain on the living room carpet when behind you is a mountain of excrement covering the living room couch and coffee table,” Booker said. 

He added that Trump’s recent financial disclosure revealed he made nearly $2 billion in crypto and foreign investments, and pointed to his sons’ Eric and Don Jr.’s backing of defense tech business ventures.

“The lack of proportionality going on (by) my colleagues, it is laughable,” he said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse described Blanche’s two-paragraph signed statement and unsigned memo in response to Cornyn and Tillis’ concerns as “decorative.”

The Rhode Island Democrat said the Trump administration could reverse course and create a similar fund.

“Nothing in this document prevents anything like that from happening,” Whitehouse said.

Durbin accused Blanche of lying under oath when he denied during his confirmation hearing a comment he made about the “anti-weaponization” fund during a pre-hearing meeting with Durbin.

“Mr. Blanche told me he made, quote, ‘a mistake,’ end quote, by creating the January 6th slush fund. Where did he say it? In my office, with witnesses on my staff to what I’m about to say. When I asked him about this under oath, Mr. Blanche falsely claimed that he never made this statement,” Durbin said.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., slammed Trump for suing the Internal Revenue Service in the first place. The contractor who leaked Trump and his sons’ and organization’s tax information to reporters in 2019 was sentenced for the crime in 2024.

“He waits til he’s president. He sues the IRS for $10 billion. In a stunning act of self-dealing, he purports to settle with himself. He’s represented by his personal lawyers on the one hand, and by his other lawyers at the Department of Justice on the other hand,” Schiff said, highlighting the Florida federal judge’s order that Trump used his presidency to “manipulate” the court for his benefit. 

“Now there was an effort, and I appreciate my colleagues from Texas and North Carolina making an effort to try to rein in this tax settlement. But what they attempted to achieve has not been achieved,” Schiff said.

Epstein survivors disappointed

Blanche’s nomination vote drew criticism from outside the committee as well.

In an open letter Tuesday, 18 survivors of abuse by the now deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Maxwell called the vote “a profound disappointment.”

Survivors have slammed Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files release, which unmasked several survivors’ names and images in the process “while he concealed the identities of alleged abusers and others connected to Epstein’s trafficking network,” the letter stated.

“When we met with Blanche (after his confirmation hearing), he interrupted us. He told us to ‘get to the point.’ He told us to report what happened to us to the FBI. We already have. Some of us have been reporting these crimes for decades,” the survivors wrote.

In another line of criticism, the legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward said in a letter to the Justice Department Monday that Blanche has refused to provide a sworn statement in federal court that the “anti-weaponization” fund will not accept and pay out claims.

Democracy Forward is representing several plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the fund, including a former federal prosecutor who alleges he was fired in June 2025 for his involvement in Jan. 6 prosecutions.

“The American people are not fooled by this latest move, and neither are we. The Trump-Vance administration cannot ask the public or our clients to accept a late-night social media post in place of legally binding action,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward in a statement Monday.