Todd Blanche spent the weekend doing the one thing a nominee never wants to do: writing down, in a binding order, that a $1.8 billion pot of money he had approved was dead. It worked well enough to get him out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. It did not work well enough to get him Susan Collins.
The acting attorney general now sits one Republican defection away from losing the job he has been running for months, and the fight that got him here was not with Democrats. It was with members of his own party who decided that a fund set up to compensate the president’s allies was a liability they were not willing to carry into a midterm year.
The Fund Cornyn and Tillis Refused to Take on Faith
John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina spent weeks blocking the nomination over the Justice Department’s so-called anti-weaponization fund, and they were explicit about the price of their votes. In a joint statement, the two senators said they had been clear “from the outset” that they needed a written document constraining the scope of the audit protection and “legally ending the anti-weaponization fund,” not another round of verbal assurances at a hearing.
They got it. The senators said they were pleased that the department had issued a formal order terminating the fund and had acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury. Cornyn added that he was not the only Republican in the conference who wanted the thing scrapped.
That is the part worth sitting with. The pressure that killed a $1.8 billion payout vehicle came from Republican senators, not from a subpoena, a court order, or a Democratic filibuster. Two men on their way out of the chamber used the only leverage they had left, and they used it on a nominee the White House desperately wanted seated.
A Presidential Lawsuit Against the IRS Built the Fund in the First Place
The fund did not appear out of nowhere. It was created as part of a settlement between President Donald Trump and his own Justice Department, resolving a case Trump had brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. A federal judge dismissed a $10 billion suit Trump filed against the IRS ahead of that settlement, and the deal that followed was the first known instance of a sitting president reaching such an agreement with the government he runs.
Attached to it were audit protections shielding Trump, his family, and his companies from tax enforcement on prior returns. The department has since clarified in writing that those protections apply retroactively only and reach no further than the parties named in the settlement. That clarification is exactly what Cornyn and Tillis demanded, and it is a narrower deal than the one signed in May.
Blanche’s own account is that nothing was ever spent. No members were appointed to direct the fund, no money was transferred, and no claims were paid, according to the order he issued and the testimony he had given the committee. Whether that is reassuring depends entirely on how much weight a written order carries once the political heat is off.
Grassley’s 12-10 Vote and the Case He Made for Blanche
With the fund formally dead, the committee moved. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nomination 12-10 on August 4, sending it to the floor along party lines. The nomination is docketed on Capitol Hill as PN1078, Todd Blanche of Florida, to be Attorney General.
Chairman Chuck Grassley did not make a procedural case for the nominee. He made a crime case, and he made it before the roll was called, in an opening statement that framed the vote as a public-safety decision rather than a personnel one. Blanche’s Justice Department, Grassley said, “has reprioritized the safety of Americans after the Biden administration opened the borders to violent criminals,” and his vote to advance the nomination was “a vote for the safety of the American people.” The committee’s release notes that the nomination is backed by more than 670,000 law enforcement officers, 300 Angel Families, and more than 100 bipartisan former U.S. attorneys and Justice Department officials spanning eight administrations.
The numbers behind that argument are not nothing. Research tracking major American cities found the homicide rate falling to its lowest level in more than 125 years, with every major violent crime category dropping below pre-pandemic levels. Republicans intend to run on that record, and they would prefer to run on it without an $1.8 billion asterisk attached.
Susan Collins Breaks and the Arithmetic Turns Brutal
Within hours of the committee vote, Collins ended the suspense. The Maine Republican announced she would vote no, writing that while she believes Blanche is a capable lawyer, “the Department of Justice has become increasingly political” and that he “has taken several actions that have further eroded the Department’s independence.”
Her objections were specific. She pointed to the order shielding the president, his sons, and the family business from IRS audits, protections she noted are unavailable to any other American taxpayer, and to the creation of the $1.8 billion fund itself. Killing the fund after the fact did not move her.
That leaves the math tight. With Collins opposed, Blanche can afford to lose only one more Republican. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has said she wanted to evaluate the nomination once it cleared committee, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has not committed either. In a chamber this narrow, a handful of senators can end a Cabinet nomination without a single speech on the floor.
A Written Order Is Not the Same Thing as a Repeal
The concession that unlocked the committee vote has a ceiling, and Republicans on the committee are not the only ones who noticed. Some legal analysts have argued that despite the written agreement, a future order could reinstate the plan, because what one department order terminates another department order can revive.
That is a real limitation, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. It is also the predictable consequence of settling a dispute through executive paperwork rather than statute. Cornyn and Tillis extracted the strongest instrument available to two senators with no bill and no gavel. Anyone who wanted a permanent bar needed Congress to write one, and Congress did not.
What the Floor Vote Settles Before the Recess
Senate Republican leaders want the confirmation vote finished before members leave for the August recess, which turns a nomination fight into a scheduling problem with a deadline. Every day the vote slips is another day for a wavering Republican to find a reason.
The stakes are larger than one man’s title. Blanche has been running the Justice Department in an acting capacity, and a failed confirmation would leave the department’s leadership unsettled heading into a midterm campaign in which crime and federal law enforcement are central Republican arguments. A successful one hands the administration a confirmed attorney general who has already demonstrated he will fold under pressure from his own party when the political cost gets high enough.
Cornyn and Tillis proved something in the process. The fund is gone because two Republicans refused to accept a promise and demanded a document. Collins is voting no because, in her judgment, the document arrived too late to undo what it was correcting. Both positions can be right at once, and the floor vote will decide which one carried the day.
This article was researched and written with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources before publication.
Julian Harrow specializes in taxation, IRS rules, and compliance strategy. His work helps readers navigate complex tax codes, deadlines, and reporting requirements while identifying opportunities for efficiency and risk reduction. At The Daily Overview, Julian breaks down tax-related topics with precision and clarity, making a traditionally dense subject easier to understand.
