President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to revive a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund if two Republican senators follow through on their opposition to his attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that if Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina refuse to confirm Blanche, he will keep him on as acting attorney general and aggressively push Congress to pass the anti-weaponization bill, which would provide compensation to people who claim they were mistreated by the Biden administration.
The threat marks the latest escalation in a standoff between the president and the two departing senators, both of whom have clashed with Trump and are leaving Congress. Cornyn lost his re-election bid in a primary runoff against Attorney General Ken Paxton after Trump endorsed his opponent, while Tillis announced his retirement one day after drawing the president’s ire over his opposition to a GOP-backed domestic policy package. The two senators have conditioned their support for Blanche’s nomination on the administration abandoning its plans for the fund, which would compensate January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump for claims of government overreach.
Tillis fired back quickly following Trump’s post, blaming the president directly for stalling what he called an otherwise qualified nominee. He noted that comments as recently as Friday suggested the fund was dead, and accused Trump of planning to resurrect what he described as a “payout pot for punks” through either another bogus fund or legislation that most Senate Republicans would oppose. Tillis expressed hope that the situation could still be resolved by Tuesday.
The nomination has been in trouble for weeks, with Cornyn and Tillis previously warning that other Republican senators share their concerns even if they don’t sit on the Judiciary Committee. The committee postponed a vote on Wednesday night as a result. Just days earlier at a Cabinet meeting, Trump had defended the fund publicly before seeming to concede it was no longer viable, saying it was dead but wishing otherwise. The fund was part of a settlement agreement stemming from a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS and has been blocked indefinitely by a federal judge, though the administration has not committed to dropping the matter entirely.