When Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis first withheld their support from attorney general nominee Todd Blanche, they had two major demands: formally kill the president’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund and at least narrow the scope of the president and his family’s immunity from IRS audits. 

Ultimately, Cornyn and Tillis may have accepted a deal that falls well short of those goals. But the agreement appears to give them enough to claim victory — even as questions remain about how durable or real the changes actually are.

Late Sunday night — after days of drama and closed-door negotiations — Blanche posted two documents on X seeming to address concerns with the settlement between the IRS and the Trump Justice Department. 

One document, bearing Blanche’s signature, formally rescinds the order that created the nearly $1.8 billion “ anti-weaponization” fund.

“This Order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no fund,” Blanche wrote.

The second document, which does not have Blanche’s signature, clarifies that the IRS audit immunity is only retroactive and applies only to the named parties in the lawsuit in January — President Donald Trump, his two oldest sons and the Trump organization.

On its face, the documents appear to meet the demands made by Cornyn and Tillis. And by Monday morning, both said they would vote to dispatch the nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But a closer inspection of the agreement — and the president’s own comments about the deal — suggests there are plenty of holes.

In the signed order, Blanche officially kills the so-called anti-weaponization fund in a single sentence, writing the nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer fund is “rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” He does not, however, specify that the order is withdrawn permanently, meaning there is a possibility the DOJ could try to revive the fund. 

That possibility is compounded by the fact that the settlement agreement, which yielded the fund, remains in effect. 

Blanche didn’t publish any document signaling that agreement has been voided. In fact, the text of the agreement specifies that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.” 

The parties to President Donald Trump’s original $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS are Trump himself, his two eldest sons, the Trump Organization and the IRS. 

The second document raises a different issue.

The unsigned memo addressing the audit immunity is not an official order. Instead, it only offers Blanche’s interpretation of the agreement’s terms. 

He writes that the immunity deal only extends to the “named parties in the lawsuit.” That is a narrower scope than the original agreement, but the memo does not formally change the terms of the deal. It is not, after all, an official order signed by Blanche.

Trump himself downplayed the significance of the concessions that Cornyn and Tillis got Monday afternoon. When MS NOW asked the president during an executive order signing in the Oval Office whether he had signed off on Blanche’s deal, Trump said he had not. But he added that it was his understanding that Blanche only “agreed to reconfirm things that he’s already said.”

“And what he’s said is OK,” Trump said.

Democrats, for their part, were quick to poke holes in the already porous agreement.

“This supposed ‘deal’ doesn’t prevent payouts to violent insurrectionists in the future. It doesn’t prevent the admin from bringing the slush fund back from the dead next week or using DOJ’s Judgment Fund for the same illicit purpose,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee, wrote on X. “It leaves in place a tax-immunity deal that could help Trump skip taxes on the $2.3 billion he made last year, and still leaves it vague who and what is covered.”

“The Judiciary Committee and its members should not settle for less than the Acting Attorney General following through on his promise of helping to write this into statute,” Schiff continued.

While the agreement may be enough for Cornyn and Tillis — and enough to move Blanche through the Judiciary Committee — it remains unclear whether the orders will sway other GOP holdouts when his nomination hits the Senate floor.

Last week, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told MS NOW she was reserving judgment until she saw how questions involving the “anti-weaponization” fund and IRS audit immunity were resolved.

“I have been waiting to see the outcome of the hearing on the anti-weaponization fund and the IRS issues,” Collins said. “I’ve been following closely.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has also spoken out about the fund and Trump’s IRS audit immunity, declined to comment when asked about Blanche’s nomination by MS NOW last week.

And Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in May and has since become a top critic of the president, has been careful not to throw his weight behind Blanche’s nomination.

Beyond the fund and audit immunity, Cassidy has said he’s worried Blanche will continue acting as Trump’s personal attorney while leading the DOJ.

“I’m very concerned about the weaponization of the Justice Department,” Cassidy said, according to KPLC 7 News last week. Asked if he would support Blanche if the vote happened that day, Cassidy responded, “I’m not going to answer that, because I’m still in the information gathering stage.”

If just two of those Republicans vote against Blanche on the floor, his nomination could fail. With Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., still in rehab following a lengthy hospitalization, the breakdown in the Senate is 52 Republicans to 47 Democrats. Two GOP defections could derail Blanche’s chances at the permanent attorney general job.

Still, the agreement could lend some vulnerable Republicans political cover to support Blanche’s nomination. 

While plenty of GOP lawmakers have expressed concerns with the fund and the president’s audit immunity, the documents from Blanche bolster the argument that GOP lawmakers successfully blocked the fund.

Cornyn and Tillis made that argument on Monday.

“From the outset, we were clear that we needed a written document addressing our concerns on the IRS audit agreement and the anti-weaponization fund that included constraining the scope of audit protection by limiting it to the parties of the Settlement Agreement and legally ending the anti-weaponization fund,” the pair wrote in a joint statement.

“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” they said. “Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share.”

Of course, Trump remains a wild card over the nomination — particularly after his comments on Monday.

The president has repeatedly undermined the importance of the concessions that Blanche has offered, and he has gone after Cornyn and Tillis throughout the negotiations.

Over the weekend, Trump warned on Truth Social that he would push to resurrect the “anti-weaponization” fund if senators didn’t confirm Blanche.

Another wild card is Trump himself. The president warned on Truth Social over the weekend that if Cornyn and Tillis continued to withhold support from Blanche, he would push to resurrect the “anti-weaponization” fund and keep Blanche in his acting attorney general role indefinitely. 

“Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote.

The post How Cornyn and Tillis’ deal on Blanche falls short of their demands appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.