President Trump said he may temporarily withdraw Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination rather than make concessions to two Republican senators who want the DOJ to formally kill a controversial settlement tied to Trump's IRS lawsuit.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a planned vote to advance Blanche's nomination on Thursday after Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina made clear they would not support the acting attorney general without written assurances that a proposed billion-dollar fund for Trump allies and tax-audit protections for the president's family are permanently off the table. Trump responded on his social media platform with a blunt counter: he would rather wait both senators out than bend.
Trump posted on Truth Social:
"I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office."
Both Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year. Trump called Blanche "a STAR" and made clear he intends to keep him running the Justice Department in an acting capacity regardless of what the Senate does.
At the center of the standoff is a settlement Trump's own Department of Justice negotiated to resolve the president's lawsuit against the IRS. That settlement afforded Trump and members of his family protection from tax audits. It also included a proposed $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" designed to compensate Trump allies, a provision that drew bipartisan opposition and was ultimately scrapped after the backlash stalled immigration enforcement legislation.
Blanche told the Judiciary Committee under oath on July 15 that "the weaponization fund is dead." Cornyn and Tillis say that is not enough. They want the commitment in writing from DOJ leadership, not just verbal testimony.
Cornyn has been direct about his position. The Washington Examiner reported the Texas senator said:
"I don't know whether they think they can wait us out or we'll cave, but I assure you, we won't."
That is not the language of a senator looking for a face-saving exit. Cornyn also pushed back directly on Trump's framing, posting on X that the president was "mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis." The implication: other Republican senators share the unease but have not yet gone public.
The Senate was already racing to confirm Trump nominees before the August recess, and the postponed Blanche vote makes confirmation before that break increasingly unlikely.
Trump's willingness to shelve the nomination rather than negotiate reflects a practical reality: he does not need the Senate's cooperation to keep Blanche in charge. Under federal law, specifically 28 U.S.C. Section 508, which allows a deputy attorney general to exercise all duties of the attorney general when that office is vacant, Blanche can continue running the department with no clear time limit.
Legal analyst Ed Whelan, writing in National Review, laid out the math. Even if the Senate rejects or returns Blanche's nomination, he could serve as acting attorney general for 210 days afterward. A fresh nomination would restart that clock. Whelan concluded that those overlapping time periods "could consume the remaining 2-1/2 years of Trump's term."
Whelan added a pointed observation: "The White House will have no genuine cause for complaint if the Senate does not confirm Blanche's nomination, as one way or another Blanche can continue running DOJ."
In other words, the confirmation fight is about principle and precedent, not operational control of the Justice Department. Trump already has his man in place.
Blanche replaced Pam Bondi, who was fired in April after what the White House characterized as a failure to prosecute Trump's perceived political opponents. Since taking over, Blanche has aggressively pursued the president's agenda at DOJ, including pursuing cases against Trump's foes.
But the Anti-Weaponization Fund became a flashpoint. The proposed $1.776 billion pot, the number itself a nod to the nation's founding year, was meant to compensate individuals the administration considered victims of government overreach, including January 6 defendants. Newsmax reported that Cornyn demanded "concrete confirmation of what he testified to" before casting a vote, saying the Senate did not need "well-wishes or impressions."
When Trump first tapped Blanche as permanent attorney general, the move was widely seen as a consolidation of loyalty at DOJ. The nomination of a president's former personal lawyer to run the department was always going to draw scrutiny. What few anticipated was that the strongest resistance would come from within the president's own party.
The tax audit protections embedded in the IRS settlement are a separate but related concern. Cornyn and Tillis object to a deal in which the president's own Justice Department negotiated terms that directly benefit the president and his family, a structure that, whatever its legal merits, carries an obvious conflict-of-interest problem that even friendly senators cannot ignore.
Trump's strategy is straightforward: if Cornyn and Tillis will not confirm Blanche now, he will wait until they are gone. Both senators retire next year. Trump has signaled no interest in finding a compromise candidate or offering the written assurances the two senators are demanding.
That approach carries risks. A prolonged vacancy in the confirmed attorney general slot gives critics ammunition to argue that the Justice Department lacks proper Senate oversight. It also sets a precedent, a president can effectively bypass the confirmation process by keeping a loyalist in an acting role indefinitely, daring the Senate to do something about it.
Trump has shown a consistent willingness to take dramatic unilateral action when he believes the bureaucracy or the legislature is obstructing his agenda. Pulling Blanche's nomination and waiting out two senators fits that pattern.
But Cornyn's warning, that opposition to the IRS settlement terms extends beyond just two senators, raises a question the White House has not answered. If broader Republican concerns exist, renominating Blanche after Cornyn and Tillis retire may not solve the problem. It may simply delay it.
Several key details remain unresolved. The precise terms of the IRS settlement protections, which Trump family members are covered, and which allies were slated for payouts under the Anti-Weaponization Fund have not been fully disclosed. Cornyn and Tillis are, in effect, asking for transparency that the administration has not volunteered.
Trump's political influence over the Republican conference is well documented. But influence has limits when senators believe a principle is at stake, and when those senators have nothing left to lose because they are already heading for the exits.
The New York Post reported that Blanche's testimony under oath that the fund "is dead" has not satisfied the holdouts, who want DOJ to put the commitment on paper. The gap between a sworn statement and a formal written assurance may seem narrow. To Cornyn and Tillis, it is the whole fight.
When two retiring senators from your own party would rather pick a public fight with the White House than take a nominee's word for it, the problem is not stubbornness, it is trust.
