A high-stakes partisan standoff has erupted between former president and current U.S. President Donald Trump and two Senate Republican incumbents over the confirmation of his attorney general nominee, with Trump threatening to bring back a scrapped, ethically questioned $1.8 billion compensation fund for his political allies if the lawmakers block the nomination.
Todd Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general since April, requires unanimous support from all Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to move his confirmation forward to a full Senate vote. But two outgoing Republican senators — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose current terms both end in January — have refused to throw their support behind Blanche, citing their deep opposition to the potential resurrection of Trump’s so-called anti-weaponisation fund.
In a public post to his social platform Truth Social Saturday, Trump hit back at the two holdout senators, claiming their opposition stems from his refusal to endorse their re-election campaigns. The president warned that if the pair blocks Blanche’s nomination, the dormant compensation fund will immediately be reintroduced and enacted. He added that even if confirmation is derailed, he will retain Blanche as acting attorney general and continue pushing aggressively to pass formal legislation authorizing the fund.
First proposed earlier this year, the fund was designed to settle a personal lawsuit Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the unauthorized leak of his confidential tax returns. Under the original proposal, allies of the president would be eligible to claim compensation for what they frame as politically targeted prosecutions carried out by prior U.S. administrations. The plan drew immediate bipartisan backlash from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over its ethical implications, leading Blanche — who led original negotiations for the fund — to scrap the proposal. A federal judge later formally blocked the fund, issuing a ruling that raised clear concerns the initiative violated federal ethical guidelines.
Cornyn and Tillis have demanded that Blanche provide a written commitment that the U.S. Department of Justice will not revive the fund at any point in the future. To date, the Trump administration has refused to issue such a guarantee, escalating the deadlock.
Responding to Trump’s Saturday threats on social platform X, Tillis pushed back against the president’s reversal on the fund’s status. He noted that just one day prior, the administration had publicly stated the fund was permanently dead. “President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against,” Tillis wrote. He added that it is regrettable that Blanche, who he personally considers qualified to hold the attorney general post, will see his nomination stall over this policy reversal, but expressed hope the impasse could be resolved before the committee’s scheduled vote Tuesday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a procedural meeting for Tuesday to hold a potential vote on advancing Blanche’s nomination. The BBC has reached out to Cornyn’s office for additional comment on the standoff, but has not yet received a response.
Despite acknowledging during a Friday cabinet meeting at Camp David that the fund was currently “dead”, Trump made clear that the initiative remains a top policy priority for his administration. The president told reporters that he continues to support compensation for individuals he claims were wrongfully targeted and abused by the U.S. Department of Justice under previous leadership. “I think people are horribly treated. Horribly abused,” Trump said. “I’d like to see them compensated for the pain. People they were very successful that wanted to go to a rally or an event…ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror. They’ve agreed to not have a fund, but there are a lot of people that are very set about it.”
Even as outgoing lame-duck lawmakers, Cornyn and Tillis have become unexpected obstacles to Trump’s policy and personnel agenda, despite Trump’s public claims that he has already ended their political careers. Tillis first drew the president’s anger when he opposed Trump’s signature “One, Big, Beautiful” tax and spending package, while Cornyn — a long-time Trump ally — broke with the president after Trump endorsed his Republican primary challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.