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former criminal defense lawyer, issued a brief signed statement on social media Sunday night promising the fund is “rescinded,” and an attached unsigned memo stated the tax immunity deal for Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization only applies “retroactively.”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 It’s done, it’s been rescinded, and I am satisfied,” Tillis said.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

A Department of Justice spokesperson told States Newsroom Tuesday Blanche’s comments have been “mischaracterized and need to be understood in their full context, which was with respect to mail order abortion drugs, not a broader expansion of federal control over states.”

On the criticism of DOJ’s legal intervention to obtain state voter records, the spokesperson said the department “will continue to fight for the integrity of American elections. Ensuring that only eligible citizens vote is a core function of government, and states have an obligation to maintain accurate voter rolls. Where states refuse to comply with lawful requests for voter data, DOJ will pursue every legal avenue available.”

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.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said Whitehouse’s claim is “untrue” and said the department “has released all responsive documents required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.” 

“The Department erred on the side of over-collecting from its components to ensure collection of everything necessary under the Act, resulting in over six million pages collected, almost three million of which are responsive and have been produced. The remaining items were non-responsive, meaning entirely unrelated, privileged, or duplicative. This administration has been more transparent on the Epstein matter than any past administration, including the Biden administration,” the spokesperson said in a written response to States Newsroom.

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.

A department spokesperson told States Newsroom in a statement that the senator’s accusation is “false and he knows it.”

“The Acting AG signed an order on August 2nd that rescinds the May 18th Order establishing an Anti-Weaponization Fund. He restated and incorporated testimony he gave under oath that the May 19th Order has effect only on plaintiffs and defendants, and that the release is retroactive only. As Acting AG Blanche said at the hearing, the fund is dead. This has been relayed before the House and Senate under oath and in multiple court filings,” according to the spokesperson.

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.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump defended his highly criticized, nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” settlement fund on social media and in a Cabinet meeting Friday, as two key Republican senators withheld support for the president’s nominee for attorney general over Trump’s refusal to formally end the pot of money.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that the fund, in exchange for him dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, would not benefit him, but rather “the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration” after they participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On the first day of his second term, Trump commuted the prison sentences of 14 of the attack’s ringleaders and members of the paramilitary groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. The president granted a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to all others charged with crimes after the attack.

“Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” Trump continued in a 254-word post.

He also attacked Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn and said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche should be “immediately approved” as attorney general.

Cornyn and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, both members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, have refused to advance Blanche’s nomination from committee to the full Senate until Blanche, also Trump’s former personal defense lawyer, formally ends the “anti-weaponization” fund in writing. 

Blanche, of Florida, maintains his comments before a House Appropriations subcommittee in June prove the administration ended the fund.

‘Legal and political albatross’

In a late morning statement on X, Tillis said Trump “made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it.”

“While I never disagreed that the Biden Administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation’s Capitol are not ‘great American patriots’ who are ‘victims of government abuse.’ Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government,” Tillis wrote.

He added he and Cornyn are working with Blanche, whom he described as “forthright, thoughtful and patient,” on ending the fund. 

“It’s a shame his confirmation has hit a snag only because an incompetent personal advisor to the President refuses to amend the bogus settlement. I will continue working in good faith to put an end this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars,” Tillis wrote.

Tillis’ office did not respond to a question about the identity of the adviser the senator mentioned in the statement.

When being questioned by reporters at the Cabinet meeting at Camp David just over an hour later, Trump said Blanche should be confirmed as attorney general “forthwith” and that the fund is “dead.”

“But you know, I wish it weren’t. To be honest with you, I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused. … and I’d like to see them compensated for the pain.”

The White House press office on Friday issued a press release linking to statements and quotes in support of Blanche from dozens of law enforcement associations, former Justice Department officials and Republican lawmakers.

Trump, Cornyn and Tillis

On Thursday, Trump threatened to pull Blanche’s nomination and leave him in an acting capacity until both Cornyn and Tillis leave office at year’s end.

Cornyn’s career in the Senate is ending after he lost in a runoff election in May to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump endorsed.

Tillis announced last year he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to find primary opponents to challenge the North Carolina Republican after he refused to support Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had scheduled a committee vote on Blanche’s nomination for Thursday morning, but postponed the vote late Wednesday when it was clear Cornyn and Tillis were not yet satisfied.

The Judiciary Committee is split between 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All Democrats are expected to oppose Blanche, and a majority vote is required to advance Blanche’s nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

Judge slammed Trump settlement

Trump’s settlement with the IRS faced opposition on multiple fronts, including in court.

In a July 13 order, the Florida federal judge in Trump’s IRS case slammed the president’s settlement with his own administration as using the presidency to “manipulate” the courts.

Lawyers for Trump, his two sons and the Trump Organization made public in a federal court filing Friday their plans to appeal a lower court order that bars them “from referring to the purported ‘settlement agreement’ … as evidence of a ‘settlement’ reached in this matter.”

The Justice Department’s announcement of the “anti-weaponization” fund in May immediately drew scrutiny from both sides of the aisle for the possibility that Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers could reap a reward.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. and Frank Bisignano, the Internal Revenue Service’s chief executive officer, a position created by Trump, signed the settlement that Trump negotiated with his own administration officials for himself, his sons and the private Trump Organization.

Like Blanche, Woodward also had ties to Trump’s criminal cases prior to the president’s second term. Woodward represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the government’s 2023 case regarding classified material found at Mar-a-Lago.

Opposition to the “anti-weaponization” fund among Republicans snarled quick passage of an immigration enforcement package to fund Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term.

The settlement deal also includes immunity for Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization from tax audits and enforcement connected to any tax information leaked by a government contractor in 2019. The contractor was prosecuted and sentenced to jail time in 2024.

Cornyn pressed Blanche on the tax immunity portion of the deal during a July 15 confirmation hearing. Blanche defended the terms as “typical” of settlements with the IRS.

Cornyn wrote on social media Thursday the president is “mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis.”

Former Department of Justice officials told committee Democrats the IRS settlement language was “mind-boggling,” during a July 22 forum hosted by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. 

Amelia Twyman contributed to this report.