{"id":712,"date":"2026-08-04T19:10:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T19:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=712"},"modified":"2026-08-04T19:10:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T19:10:45","slug":"blanche-clears-key-hurdle-in-bid-to-lead-justice-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=712","title":{"rendered":"Blanche clears key hurdle in bid to lead Justice Department"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche moved one step closer to permanently leading the Justice Department Tuesday after two skeptical Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans voted to advance his nomination, following Blanche\u2019s signed promise that President Donald Trump\u2019s nearly $1.8 billion \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund is dead.<\/p>\n

Read more Funding deal could spare agencies another shutdown fight<\/a><\/p>\n

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who had been withholding support for Blanche, voted with other members of the committee along party lines, 12-10, to send Blanche\u2019s nomination to the full Senate. It is unclear how soon the Senate will vote on the confirmation.<\/p>\n

Blanche, Trump\u2019s former criminal defense lawyer, issued a brief signed statement on social media Sunday night promising the fund is \u201crescinded.\u201d An attached unsigned memo stated the tax immunity deal for Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization only applies \u201cretroactively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump did not sign the documents, and the president has defended the fund in recent days.<\/p>\n

Cornyn said ahead of the vote Tuesday that he and Tillis came to an agreement with Justice Department officials on an \u201cagency interpretive guidance document\u201d that reaffirms what Blanche said in his sworn testimony: the tax audit immunity is limited to the parties and subject matter in Trump\u2019s $10 billion lawsuit against his administration\u2019s own IRS.<\/p>\n

Trump voluntarily dropped the lawsuit in May in exchange for tax enforcement immunity for him, his sons Eric and Don Jr. and the Trump Organization. The agreement also created a $1.776 billion \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund that could potentially pay out to violent, but now pardoned, Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted police.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven this agreement with Mr. Blanche, I expect the department to live up to this in future litigation, and I will vote to advance him out of the committee today,\u201d Cornyn said at the opening of Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

Tillis said the question over the \u201cpayout pot for punks\u201d was settled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve never liked this 1776 fund. It made no sense to me, and I thought it was an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th. It’s done, it’s been rescinded, and I am satisfied,\u201d Tillis said.<\/p>\n

Tillis argued \u201cboth (sides) have a problem,\u201d and he hopes Blanche will attempt \u201ca bending of the curve of this absurdity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration \u2026 Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that a little bit more intense than the prior administration, and so on and so forth. But folks, we’ve got to end this stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added the \u201cbonehead\u201d DOJ official in North Carolina who is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey for a social media post of seashells on a beach spelling out \u201c8647\u201d \u2014 a nod to a restaurant kitchen term to get rid of something \u2014 \u201cbetter damn sure have information to back it up because if all it is is a picture, that person should lose his or her job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats united in opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n

All committee Democrats followed ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois in delivering remarks opposing Blanche\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

The panel\u2019s minority members raised concerns about Blanche\u2019s handling of the Epstein files, his meeting with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, federal lawsuits involving states\u2019 voter records and a promise to faith leaders that the DOJ will make the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to overturn federal abortion protections \u201cpermanent in every single state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice did not respond to States Newsroom\u2019s request for comment about the criticisms.<\/p>\n

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., chastised his Republican counterparts for comparing the Trump administration\u2019s actions to the Biden administration, including President Joe Biden\u2019s pardons of his son Hunter and other officials just hours before leaving office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is like being obsessed and using a magnifying glass to study the stain on the living room carpet when behind you is a mountain of excrement covering the living room couch and coffee table,\u201d Booker said.<\/p>\n

Read more OPM tells agencies to put tech recruiting at the center of staffing plans<\/a><\/p>\n

He added that Trump\u2019s recent financial disclosure revealed he made nearly $2 billion in crypto and foreign investments, and pointed to his sons Eric and Don Jr.\u2019s backing of defense tech business ventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lack of proportionality going on (by) my colleagues, it is laughable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.,\u00a0described Blanche\u2019s two-paragraph signed statement and unsigned memo in response to Cornyn and Tillis\u2019 concerns as \u201cdecorative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitehouse said the Trump administration could reverse course and create a similar fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing in this document prevents anything like that from happening,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Durbin accused Blanche of lying under oath when he denied during his confirmation hearing a comment he made about the \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund during a pre-hearing meeting with Durbin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Blanche told me he made, quote, \u2018a mistake,\u2019 end quote, by creating the January 6th slush fund. Where did he say it? In my office, with witnesses on my staff to what I’m about to say. When I asked him about this under oath, Mr. Blanche falsely claimed that he never made this statement,\u201d Durbin said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., criticized Trump for suing the Internal Revenue Service in the first place. The contractor who leaked Trump\u2019s and his sons\u2019 and organization\u2019s tax information to reporters in 2019 was sentenced for the crime in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe waits til he\u2019s president. He sues the IRS for $10 billion. In a stunning act of self-dealing, he purports to settle with himself. He’s represented by his personal lawyers on the one hand, and by his other lawyers at the Department of Justice on the other hand,\u201d Schiff said, highlighting the Florida federal judge\u2019s order that Trump used his presidency to \u201cmanipulate\u201d the court for his benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there was an effort, and I appreciate my colleagues from Texas and North Carolina making an effort to try to rein in this tax settlement. But what they attempted to achieve has not been achieved,\u201d Schiff said.<\/p>\n

Epstein survivors disappointed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blanche\u2019s nomination vote drew criticism from outside the committee as well.<\/p>\n

In an open letter Tuesday, 18 survivors of abuse by the now-deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Maxwell called the vote \u201ca profound disappointment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Survivors have criticized Blanche\u2019s handling of the Epstein files release, which unmasked several survivors\u2019 names and images in the process \u201cwhile he concealed the identities of alleged abusers and others connected to Epstein\u2019s trafficking network,\u201d the letter stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we met with Blanche (after his confirmation hearing), he interrupted us. He told us to \u2018get to the point.\u2019 He told us to report what happened to us to the FBI. We already have. Some of us have been reporting these crimes for decades,\u201d the survivors wrote.<\/p>\n

In another line of criticism, the legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward said in a letter to the Justice Department Monday that Blanche has refused to provide a sworn statement in federal court that the \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund will not accept and pay out claims.<\/p>\n

Democracy Forward is representing several plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the fund, including a former federal prosecutor who alleges he was fired in June 2025 for his involvement in Jan. 6 prosecutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American people are not fooled by this latest move, and neither are we. The Trump-Vance administration cannot ask the public or our clients to accept a late-night social media post in place of legally binding action,\u201d said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, in a statement Monday.<\/p>\n

Read more Education reorganization faces bipartisan pushback, as lawmakers push to disclose price tag<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A pair of Republican senators moved the acting attorney general’s nomination forward after securing assurances about a controversial Trump-backed \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management"],"yoast_head":"\nBlanche clears key hurdle in bid to lead Justice Department - Market Relocation Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/marketrelocationreport.com\/?p=712\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blanche clears key hurdle in bid to lead Justice Department - 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