Trump Weaponized His ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ to Pressure Two Holdout Republican Senators Into Advancing Blanche’s Confirmation

Just weeks after Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” was “not moving forward,” Trump made clear it was never actually dead. The fund, a preposterous culture war grievance brought to life by Trump’s limitless capacity for seeing himself and his followers as victims, would let the Justice Department funnel taxpayer money to people it deems casualties of “weaponization”—a category broad enough to include convicted Jan. 6 defendants.

The same settlement that created the fund also handed Trump, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization sweeping immunity from IRS audits of their own tax returns.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) had been withholding their committee votes to advance Blanche’s nomination until both the fund was killed in writing and the audit-immunity language was narrowed.

CNN reports:

President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would work to get a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund passed into law if he can’t garner the support in the Senate to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general. The president said on social media he will “push hard” to codify through Congress the fund that has been at the center of resistance to Blanche’s nomination. … “Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done.”

Tillis responded to Trump’s post Saturday, saying that Blanche, “who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal.” “Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is 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 on X.

On Sunday night, Blanche rescinded the fund and narrowed the IRS immunity provision, limiting it to claims already open when the settlement was signed rather than the sweeping immunity it previously granted. Cornyn and Tillis said they were satisfied, and on Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Blanche’s nomination out of committee, with both senators backing him. This is a deal that, as a follow-up CNN report reveals, the White House was directly involved in brokering.

But the concessions are shakier than they look. Blanche’s rescission doesn’t touch the underlying settlement agreement—which can only be modified with Trump’s written consent. That means the fund could still be revived, or its terms enforced through a lawsuit, regardless of what Blanche has promised. And even if the narrowed immunity holds, Trump still walks away with a potential major windfall: protection from a tax liability that could reach $100 million, secured through a settlement a federal judge has already ruled came about via “manipulation of the judicial process.”

Asked why he expects the deal to hold, Tillis said only that he believes Blanche “is an honorable man”—though he conceded that Trump “could simply always create a new fund.”

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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