If the Senate does not confirm Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination, he will stay in his current acting role, President Donald Trump said on Saturday, adding that he would also push Congress to codify a proposed “anti-weaponisation” fund that could help his allies.
Trump has said as recently as Friday that the $1.8 billion fund was dead.
Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have held up Blanche’s nomination while seeking written assurances that the Justice Department will not set up the fund, which Trump critics have derided as a slush fund to reward supporters with taxpayer money.
In a Saturday morning post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Blanche “one of the most respected professionals, according to everybody, in the Country” and said that if Cornyn and Tillis won’t support the nomination, then he would “push hard to get the Anti-Weaponisation Bill … PASSED.”
Tillis, whose term ends in January, wrote on Saturday that Blanche would not be confirmed because of Trump’s reversal, although he hoped that the matter could be resolved by Tuesday, when the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a nomination vote.
“Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against,” Tillis posted on X.
