Congress
Cornyn challenges Blanche on fate of ‘anti-weaponization fund’
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche told Sen. John Cornyn of Texas that while the anti-weaponization fund is “dead,” the underlying settlement agreement remains an “enforceable document.”
A critical Republican vote needed for Blanche’s attorney general nomination to advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cornyn appeared at the Wednesday confirmation hearing accompanied by a poster-sized version of President Donald Trump’s settlement agreement with the IRS.
Cornyn pointed to page four, which states that “this settlement agreement may be modified only upon the written agreement of the parties.”
Blanche replied that there has not been a written agreement to modify the settlement fund while emphasizing that “it’s not moving forward” after sharp backlash from members of both parties, fearful it would be a slush fund to make payments to Trump’s political allies and rioters involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attacks.
The settlement agreement, however, remains an “enforceable document,” Blanche acknowledged, noting that Trump’s counsel could potentially seek to enforce the contract by a breach of contract lawsuit.
“They can’t force the Department of Justice to move forward with the weaponization fund,” Blanche said. “They could potentially say that, I suppose, that we breached by not moving forward,” but added, “They haven’t done that and I’m not aware that they’re planning on doing that.”
Cornyn has said he needs assurances from Blanche that there is no way the anti-weaponization fund could ever go into effect. It’s not clear whether Blanche’s response will be satisfactory toward that end. A single Republican vote against Blanche in committee could thwart his chances of being confirmed, assuming all Democrats vote “no.”
The $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” originally floated by the Justice Department was born out of a settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit Trump brought against the IRS for leaking his tax information. The other outcome of that settlement was the guarantee of IRS immunity for Trump, his business and family members — also a subject of intense scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Blanche noted earlier in the Wednesday confirmation hearing that the IRS audit shield is “not an exemption to comply with the tax laws of the United States,” but “an agreement that any past audits would end.”
Todd Blanche was visibly frustrated during an exchange with Sen. Cory Booker as part of his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“You can ask the questions, but you cannot control my answers,” Blanche said, raising his voice. “I’m under oath, and I can answer the questions as I choose to answer them.”
The back-and-forth took place as Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, was questioning Blanche — President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as attorney general —about attending a dinner hosted by David Ellison, the head of Paramount, while the Justice Department was investigating Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
“You don’t even let me answer, man. That’s incredible,” Blanche said at another point in that exchange.
Booker also pressed Blanche about his meeting last summer with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, contrasting it with Blanche’s claims earlier in the day that he would be prohibited from meeting directly with victims of Maxwell or her co-conspirator, the late Jeffrey Epstein.
The senator called Blanche’s claim “utter nonsense,” adding that “counsel can be present, or a client can waive their right to have counsel. But you’re a lawyer. You know this. That was not truthful.”
Last summer, when he was deputy attorney general, Blanche took the highly unusual step of interviewing Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, over the course of two days as part of an effort by the Trump administration to quell outrage over its handling of the Epstein files.
Earlier Wednesday, Blanche demurred when asked by the top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, to meet with 10 Epstein victims present in the hearing room, saying, “they have lawyers, as you know. I’m prohibited from meeting directly with them.”
“I was stunned earlier by your conversation with one of my colleagues that you wouldn’t even commit to meeting with the survivors, but you did meet with Ghislaine Maxwell,” Booker told Blanche.
Several senators will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday afternoon to discuss progress on a sweeping cryptocurrency regulatory bill, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said in an interview.
Negotiations on the Clarity Act have gone back and forth for months. One of the legislation’s biggest unresolved issues involves an ethics provision seeking to address Trump’s business ties to the crypto industry. The measure is a requirement for Senate Democrats, whose support is necessary to pass the bill through the chamber.
Moreno said a group of senators will give the president an update about the bill and its “path to success.”
“We’ll be talking about the entirety of the bill. I mean, obviously the president’s been very engaged in this bill,” said Moreno, who has been involved in negotiations over the bill. “He’s the one who’s really driven the innovation that I think will pay dividends.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers are racing to pass the bill before the August recess, after which midterm election politics will make it difficult to get any substantive legislation through Congress.
“I’m hoping that we can come up with some agreement by the end of this week,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview. “I think it’s critical if we’re going to try and get this across the floor before August recess.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that he hopes to put the bill on the floor for a vote this work period, which ends Aug 7. When asked if he would put the bill to a vote even if a deal was not reached with Democrats, Thune said, “at some point, we’ll vote on it, yeah.”
It remains unclear when a revised draft of the bill will be released.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a key architect of the legislation, said in an interview that a draft could still be circulated as soon as Wednesday, but that timing was up to to Thune, and that senators were still weighing whether to include an ethics provision or leave it bracketed for later.
“There’s been some differences of opinion among senators about whether we should distribute a draft with or without the ethics language,” Lummis said. “If a decision is made to do it before there’s a final stamp of approval on ethics, it will come out with brackets saying ethics to be added. But if a decision is made to wait until the ethics language is approved, then it will take a few more days.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
The House could vote as soon as next week on a long-stalled proposal to restrict lawmaker stock-trading, according to four people granted anonymity to describe private leadership deliberations.
Republican leaders discussed scheduling the vote in a private meeting Wednesday morning and plan to move forward pending final conversations with members, the people said. The leaders intend to move it alongside a budget framework for the GOP’s new party-line spending bill, seeing the pre-summer-recess fly-out week as their best chance to finally move the legislation.
While some efforts to crack down on congressional trading have been bipartisan, the legislation GOP leaders are eyeing — the Stop Insider Trading Act — advanced out of the House Administration Committee in January on a party-line vote.
Most Democrats said the measure did not go far enough, because it allows members to keep stocks they already own in contrast to a competing bipartisan proposal that requires divestiture from individual stocks. Two moderate Democrats, Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii and Josh Riley of New York, have cosponsored the bill, which would apply to both the House and Senate.
The Senate has been much cooler to the idea of restricting members’ ability to invest and is not expected to take up the bill if it passes the House.
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