Pressed for answers, Blanche continues to hedge on scandalous ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
On the surface, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination looks like a foregone conclusion. There are all kinds of reasons why the acting AG should be rejected, but there are 53 Senate Republicans, and the idea that four of them are going to reject Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department seems far-fetched.
But just below the surface, it’s a bit more complicated. To reach the floor for a confirmation vote, Blanche first needs to clear the Senate Judiciary Committee, where GOP senators have a narrower, 11-10 majority, in the wake of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s recent death. If every Democrat on the panel votes against Blanche, which seems likely, the nominee will need unanimous support from the committee’s Republican members.
Last week, Blanche hoped to lock up that support during a difficult confirmation hearing, but that didn’t quite go according to plan: As The New York Times reported, “The fate of Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general remained uncertain on Wednesday after a rocky confirmation hearing in which a Republican senator raised serious questions about his role in creating a $1.8 billion fund for purported victims of Justice Department persecution.”
Indeed, among the most obvious reasons to oppose Blanche is his recent role in creating a highly controversial compensation fund worth $1.766 billion, which was quickly condemned by members of both parties as a “slush fund” that would be used to benefit the White House’s political allies. Given an opportunity during last week’s hearing to declare in writing that the payout fund is dead and will not be resurrected, he refused, insisting that such a step was unnecessary.
This appeared to be a point of concern for two GOP members — Texas’ John Cornyn and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis — both of whom are retiring at the end of the year, freeing them from the usual intraparty pressures. This week, the relevance of the issue lingered. Politico reported:
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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