WASHINGTON: Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Attorney General Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will support his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The endorsement from GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis paves the way for the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance Blanche\u2019s nomination on Tuesday after the Justice Department and lawmakers reached a deal to formally rescind the $1.8 billion \u201cAnti-Weaponization Fund\u201d proposed to settle Trump\u2019s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.<\/p>\n
Cornyn and Tillis had refused to back Blanche\u2019s bid for the permanent post without official confirmation killing the fund meant to compensate people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department. Blanche\u2019s written order, issued late Sunday, came after the days of negotiations between the Justice Department and the Republican senators who are leaving Capitol Hill when their terms end in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,\u201d Cornyn, of Texas, and Tillis, of North Carolina, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
DOJ order says \u2018beyond any doubt\u2019 that fund is dead<\/p>\n
Blanche has repeatedly said that the Justice Department was scrapping plans for the fund, which sparked bipartisan outcry over the possibility that violent rioters who attacked police at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be considered for payments. But skeptical lawmakers said they were concerned that could be revived without a commitment in writing, especially because Trump has continued to defend the idea.<\/p>\n
In his order posted on social media late Sunday, Blanche wrote that the department was confirming \u201cbeyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the settlement of the president\u2019s lawsuit against the IRS was announced, \u201cNo Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,\u201d the order said. \u201cThis order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cornyn and Tillis had also pressed the Justice Department to limit the scope of a separate piece of the settlement that provided broad immunity for Trump and members of his family from tax audits.<\/p>\n
Under the deal, the Justice Department clarified in writing that the tax audit immunity agreement \u201capplies by its terms only retroactively\u201d to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings. It also makes clear that only the parties that brought the lawsuit \u2014 Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization \u2014 are covered by the tax agreement.<\/p>\n
Cornyn and Tillis said in their statement that they were \u201cpleased\u201d with the concessions made by Blanche.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the outset, we were clear that we needed a written document addressing our concerns on the IRS audit agreement and the anti-weaponization fund that included constraining the scope of audit protection by limiting it to the parties of the Settlement Agreement and legally ending the anti-weaponization fund,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
Democrats, however, noted that the order rescinding the fund doesn\u2019t stop the Trump administration from compensating Jan. 6 rioters through a previously established process that allows people to file claims for damages if they believed they were wronged by the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis supposed \u2018deal\u2019 doesn\u2019t prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future,\u201d Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said in a social media post. Schiff added that it also \u201cleaves in place a tax-immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes on the $2.3 billion he made last year, and still leaves it vague who and what is covered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cornyn, Tillis echo GOP colleagues\u2019 concerns as they b<\/p>\n
locked Blanche nomination<\/p>\n
Blanche\u2019s nomination was thrown into doubt last week after the Judiciary Committee postponed a vote that had been scheduled for Thursday morning as Tillis and Cornyn said they needed more from the administration before they could provide the necessary votes.<\/p>\n
After the Thursday vote was delayed, Trump said in a social media post that he might pull Blanche\u2019s nomination and resubmit it after Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year. And on Saturday the president threatened to push forward with the fund if the two Republicans blocked Blanche\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n
On Sunday evening, Trump said that people who had faced charges from the Jan. 6, attack on the Capitol and could have benefited from the fund had \u201ctheir lives destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered,\u201d Trump said. \u201cA lot of people like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blanche, who served as Trump\u2019s defense lawyer in his criminal cases, entered the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. He was elevated to the top post after Pam Bondi was fired in April by Trump, who was frustrated by her failure to successfully prosecute his political enemies.<\/p>\n
Though Blanche insisted he wasn\u2019t auditioning for the permanent job, he has moved quickly since taking the reins of the department to promote the Trump administration\u2019s agenda and accelerate investigations into the president\u2019s perceived foes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Attorney General Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will support his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump. The endorsement from GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis paves the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101236,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101220\/revisions\/101236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}