Trump Threatens To Withdraw His AG Nominee Until 2 GOP Senators Are Gone

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appears willing to potentially sacrifice his handpicked nominee for attorney general in order to preserve a blatantly corrupt IRS legal settlement two key Republican senators are demanding changes to.

In a Thursday rant on his social media site, Trump ripped Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) for holding up the confirmation of Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney who negotiated the deal, suggesting he would instead pull Blanche's nomination until a new Senate is sworn in next year.

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Cornyn and Tillis are demanding changes to the IRS settlement, which grants Trump and his family immunity from IRS tax audits, in order to secure their votes for him in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The settlement also created a wildly problematic $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to give federal payouts to people who claim they were wronged by the U.S. government, namely Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

Cornyn, in particular, has seemed baffled by the Trump administration's refusal to rule out a revitalization of the fund, which it killed amid blowback from Republicans earlier this year.

The committee had to postpone a vote on Blanche's nomination earlier Thursday because, without Cornyn's and Tillis' support, he doesn't have the votes to advance.

"John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting," the president wrote. "Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention. 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."

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Republicans on Capitol Hill seemed caught off guard by Trump's abrupt threat to pull Blanche's nomination. Some were still in talks with the attorney general nominee and his team, and earlier Thursday, Tillis told colleagues he's been "working in good faith" with Blanche to come up with parameters on Trump's settlement deal that they can agree on.

Cornyn said he thought he had reached a deal with Blanche on Wednesday night — until Trump learned about it, and killed it.

"I think as far as Blanche and the Department of Justice, we were pretty much on the same page," he told reporters. "But then, when the president got wind of it," it was off.

The Texas senator said he hasn't spoken to Trump at all this week. As for the status of his talks with Blanche going forward, Cornyn said, "It's kind of shut down for a while."

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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed determined to find a way to advance the president's nominee.

"We're just working very hard to get a resolution," he said. "I'm going to consider [Blanche] because he's well qualified and I want to get him approved."

Asked if he thinks Trump should yank Blanche's nomination amid the delays, Grassley repeated that he wants to get him through.

"Why would I consider anything else?" he asked.

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Flocked by reporters, Tillis insisted he's "not a no" on Blanche. But he said Trump's $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund "needs to go away," and he's focused on making that happen. So far, Blanche has refused to sign a formal, written guarantee that this fund has been terminated.

"They're going to hang this yoke around our candidates' necks, and rightly so," the North Carolina senator said of voters being strongly opposed to the fund. "The only logical conclusion I can draw from this setback is that, in fact, there is somebody who wants to enable [the slush fund] at the right time. That's unacceptable."

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Cornyn has been pushing for relatively modest changes to Trump's audit immunity granted by his settlement. Namely, the Texas Republican wants to ensure it's only retrospective, not prospective. They have yet to reach an agreement on that, either.

Both senators have political beef with the president. Cornyn, a veteran Senate Republican, overwhelmingly lost his primary in May after Trump endorsed his GOP opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Tillis announced last year he wouldn't seek reelection after the president threatened to endorse a primary challenger against him after Tillis said he couldn't support the president's so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

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Asked Thursday about some people suggesting his "sour grapes" were part of the reason he was opposing Blanche's nomination, Tillis scoffed.

"You're probably talking to a very small percentage of people here whose opinions I could [not] care less about," the North Carolina senator told reporters. "I'm still working on getting this done, and I'm still optimistic that we will."

He shrugged when asked if he thinks the president would have a better chance of confirming Blanche next year, when neither Tillis nor Cornyn would be there. Democrats are seen as having an outside shot of winning control of the Senate, and public polling gives Democratic candidates small leads over the GOP nominees to replace both men.

"Well, I guess the president's going to have to decide what the split looks like," Tillis said of the Senate's partisan breakdown.

He slipped into a Senate elevator grumbling about something being "a waste of time."

Tillis and Cornyn have gotten the most attention for their hangups with Blanche, but that's namely because their votes are needed on the judiciary panel. There may be other GOP senators who have problems with the president's attorney general pick, but who are happy to let Cornyn and Tillis field tough questions about him for now.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is one of them. He has broken with the president from time to time, and also lost his Republican primary this year to a candidate backed by Trump.

Waiting for a Senate elevator to whisk him away, he stood in silence for several awkward seconds with a grin as a HuffPost reporter asked where he stands on Blanche's nomination. As he ignored the questions, the reporter tried flashing a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, looking for any sign of feelings.

The elevator doors closed.

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