Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and President Trump's nominee to hold the post permanently, rescinded a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" in a formal Justice Department order issued late Sunday, clearing the last obstacle to his confirmation. [1]
The fund, created to compensate people who say they were unfairly prosecuted by the department, had drawn objections from within Trump's own party. The rescission order was blunt about what it was undoing. "This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund," it read, adding that "No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid." [1]
Two Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had withheld support and stalled a committee vote over the fund. After the order they pronounced themselves satisfied. "We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this," they said in a joint statement, "and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon." [1]
The committee is set to take up the nomination at an executive business meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Hart 216, where Blanche is listed to be voted out of committee. [3] No result had been posted, and no floor date is set.
Chairman Chuck Grassley has been an unambiguous champion. At a July 23 committee meeting he said, "The nation's murder rate is the lowest it's been in a century, and the Justice Department has protected Americans at every turn," and he cast criticism of Blanche as vindication: opposition from "the people who engaged in the worst partisan lawfare this country has ever seen," Grassley said, means "Mr. Blanche is doing something right!" [2]
The sequence is the story. A $1.8 billion fund to pay Trump allies who say they were wrongly prosecuted was stood up, then dissolved, as the price of two senators' votes. The department now says the fund never functioned. What its brief existence bought was pressure, and what its cancellation delivers is a confirmation vote. [1]
