WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confronted skeptical questioning at a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday about the creation of a fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump and a tax immunity deal for the president as he aimed to lock down the Republican support needed to advance his nomination.
Blanche insisted that the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was scrapped after fierce bipartisan backlash, was “not moving forward.” But lawmakers, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn, raised concerns that the Trump administration has yet to commit in writing that the fund is dead and that it could therefore conceivably be resurrected.
“Just to be clear, the president of the United States, who’s a plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ and there’s no guarantee that he won’t raise it in the future?” Cornyn asked. Blanche replied that Trump has no power over the fund, which was to have been administered by the Justice Department but never launched.
Cornyn’s questions were closely watched since Blanche requires the backing of all Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and the Texas senator has not committed his support.
The hearing arrived at a tumultuous time for the Justice Department, with mass firings and resignations hollowing out the workforce and Democrats and other critics raising alarms that Blanche is still functioning as the president’s personal lawyer.
He has led the department on an interim basis since April, functioning as the public face of the maligned and later-withdrawn fund and accelerating investigations into perceived Trump adversaries. Even as he said the fund had been shelved, he made clear that immunity from tax audits afforded to Trump this year remained in place.
Those actions, along with the flawed release of files from the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation, received fresh scrutiny Wednesday.
“You’re in charge of a Department of Justice I don’t recognize, prosecuting the president’s political enemies, firing rank and file prosecutors and FBI agents,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware told Blanche. “These are some actions that in your previous confirmation hearing before us, you said you would not take.”
Blanche, for his part, insisted he has presided over a course correction following Justice Department investigations into Trump during the Biden administration.
“In recent years, we watched the Justice Department turned against many of you and a former president, and it damaged the public’s faith in justice,” Blanche argued. “We are fixing that.”
Blanche will need the support of each Republican on the panel
Key to Blanche’s confirmation are Cornyn of Texas, who in May lost his primary, and Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has opted not to seek reelection. Entering the final stretches of their Senate career, both are seen as more likely than before to split from Trump and both have been outspoken critics of the fund the Trump administration created to compensate people who feel unjustly persecuted by the criminal justice system, and then quickly withdrew.
After questioning Blanche about the fund, Cornyn told CNN he continues “to have some concerns” and is not “going to make any decisions at this point.” Tillis, meanwhile, indicated during questioning that he is likely to support Blanche, even as he said he wanted “to stick a fork in this turkey of a 1776 fund.”
With the death of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, there are 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the panel. If even one Republican on the committee votes against Blanche, it could scuttle his nomination.
Blanche insists the fund is dead. Lawmakers aren’t so sure
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” emerged as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns.
Blanche initially defended the fund only to later reveal that it was being scrapped, a retreat that followed fierce bipartisan backlash that flared during a tense closed-door meeting he had with lawmakers.
The judge who presided over the case said in a scathing ruling Monday that Trump and his lawyers had manipulated the court system through the lawsuit and subsequent settlement. The judge, Kathleen Williams, said she was troubled that Blanche had signed the settlement given that he previously represented Trump. She sent a copy of her ruling to the New York Bar Association, where an investigation is pending.
“I very much disagree with the judge’s insinuations about me, and we’re going to do what we can to make that right,” Blanche said.
Blanche also defended a separate element of the settlement that afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits and that, he has said, remains on track despite outrage over it even from Republicans. Blanche said the deal covers any existing audits but does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.
“Nobody is above the law,” Blanche said. Such a settlement “doesn’t make any of those individuals above the law.”
Epstein files are also under scrutiny
Other testimony focused on Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files, especially after his predecessor Pam Bondi told lawmakers after her ouster as attorney general that Blanche was the department’s point person on the release of documents from the sex trafficking case into the late financier.
The staggered release was beset by problems, including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims. Some names, email addresses and other identifying information were either unredacted or not fully obscured. About 1% of the records had redactions that needed to be fixed, he said.
Blanche said while “mistakes were made,” the disclosure of the documents was an exercise in unprecedented transparency, although the Justice Department only released additional files after Trump bowed to bipartisan pressure to sign a law forcing the department to do so.
“I want to make sure that the American people know that this administration, when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, has been more transparent than any administration,” he said.
A former federal prosecutor and key member of Trump’s defense team as the Republican battled four indictments, Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. At one point, under friendly questioning from Republican Sen. John Kennedy about whether he and Trump are friends, Blanche responded: “I’m his lawyer,” before quickly correcting himself to say he “was his lawyer.”
He ascended to the top job in April after Trump ousted Bondi, who had frustrated the White House by struggling to bring successful cases against Trump’s political opponents. Blanche has tried to satisfy Trump in that regard, including with an indictment of ex-FBI Director James Comey, another Trump adversary, on charges of threatening the 47th president by posting a social media photograph of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47.”
Comey has said the numbers were not a call to violence.
Blanche was also pressed on Jan. 6 violence
Tillis, who has said he would not support for attorney general anyone who equivocates on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, denounced the Biden administration Justice Department for what he said were excessive prosecutions and punishments.
Democrats, meanwhile, pressed Blanche on the violence and Trump’s sweeping clemency action benefiting more than 1,500 people, including those convicted of violently attacking police.
Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse criticized Blanche for comments at a political conference this year where he appeared to characterize the Jan. 6 pardons as an administration accomplishment. Blanche replied that he has “never said that any sort of violence against law enforcement is appropriate.”
“He has the absolute right to pardon anybody for any reason he sees fit,” Blanche said of the president. “I am not celebrating that. It is a fact.”
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Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard and Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.