Blanche nomination in peril as key GOP senator rails on DOJ over controversial fund

By Ellis Kim, Manu Raju, Hannah Rabinowitz, Alison Main, Morgan Rimmer, CNN

(CNN) — Todd Blanche’s nomination to be President Donald Trump’s attorney general is in jeopardy with a key GOP senator saying the Justice Department has not done enough to guarantee that a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund won’t move forward.

The pushback from Texas Sen. John Cornyn comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to advance Blanche’s nomination on Thursday. But without Cornyn’s support, the vote will fail – and it’s now unclear if that vote will move forward.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley would not say whether the panel would vote Thursday to advance the nomination after meeting with Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis, the two key GOP holdouts.

“We are working on getting a solution,” Grassley repeatedly told reporters on Wednesday when asked about the status of the vote.

Cornyn said earlier in the day that a planned meeting with Blanche to discuss his demands for DOJ to formally kill the fund had been canceled. The Texas Republican told CNN he still had not received the written commitment he has been demanding from Blanche and the Justice Department to formally kill the fund. As a result, he told reporters, he is not prepared to vote yes.

“Maybe they think they can roll me,” Cornyn told CNN. Asked if they could, he Cornyn replied emphatically: “No.”

“We actually sent them a red line strikeout of what we need, and they just need to make a decision, and if they do, then we’ll proceed with the markup tomorrow,” he said. “We’re trying to make it easy for them. They won’t take the help.”

A DOJ official told CNN the department, “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office. We look forward to further discussion around any outstanding concerns.”

However, Cornyn told reporters earlier on Wednesday that he hasn’t “seen a single piece of writing that is responsive to what I’ve requested.”

Blanche, at the Capitol Wednesday afternoon, did not respond to shouted questions from reporters, including whether he had provided a proposal to Cornyn to respond to the senator’s concerns and if he expects his committee vote to be delayed on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune encouraged the Trump administration to find a “resolution” with Cornyn and Tillis so the nomination can move forward.

Blanche has previously insisted that the “anti-weaponization” fund — a controversial pool of money set aside to award people who claim to have been wronged by the Justice Department, including possibly January 6, 2021, rioters — is no longer happening. The administration had also previously asserted in a court filing that it had abandoned the “anti-weaponization” fund.

Some in the Justice Department were surprised by Cornyn’s social media post Tuesday, which made clear he was still not prepared to vote in favor of Blanche. He posted to X that “there is no ‘deal’ on Blanche nom. They know what they have to do.”

The acting attorney general’s office had been confident that Blanche’s nomination would pass the committee vote. Sources within the Justice Department said there was still some confusion about what exactly would satisfy Cornyn’s push against the “anti-weaponization” fund.

Tillis insisted that the Justice Department should be able to come to an agreement with himself and Cornyn on the fund ahead of the scheduled committee vote on the nomination Thursday morning.

“I don’t believe that we’re apart in terms of the objective. And so with that, hopefully we can we can get it done,” he told CNN.

He did acknowledge that if they cannot get there, “it could affect the markup” on Thursday.

Pressed on why it has taken the DOJ so much time to find a solution to their concerns if Tillis really believes they have the same goals, the North Carolina Republican replied, “Keep in mind that everything that we’re talking about trying to reduce to writing were things that, under oath, Blanche was okay with. So, I don’t think there’s a game being played here. I think that Blanche genuinely wants to get it done because he recognizes it as the distraction that it is.”

Survivors of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were on Capitol Hill on Wednesday urging lawmakers, including Cornyn and Tillis, to vote against Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department.

“It’s not political. Just do the right thing. Be on the right side of history here,” one survivor, Dani Bensky, told reporters on Wednesday when asked for her message to the two Republicans who could potentially stop Blanche’s nomination in its tracks.

The group met with some of Cornyn’s staff and called the meeting “very pleasant” and “productive.” They said they happened to run into Tillis, who earlier this month demanded Blanche meet with survivors, and he had said he would love to arrange a meeting with them.

Bensky said she found Blanche to be “very condescending” when they met with him earlier in the month, adding, “We walked away with absolutely no answers, and it felt like a very no-win situation.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Olivia Barrett, Morgan Rimmer, Sarah Ferris and Victoria Ryan contributed to this report.