Todd Blanche doesn't believe in the rule of law, and John Cornyn and Thom Tillis don't care

Blanche's Sunday night moves should not save his nomination. The reaction from the pair of soon-departing Republican senators is not oversight and not principled.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who should not be attorney general, has made it clear in recent days that he thinks the law is a joke. Simply put, the man President Donald Trump nominated to be attorney general does not believe in the rule of law.

His Sunday night moves to save his nomination are an affront to our legal system and the Department of Justice.

Unfortunately, Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis — two Republicans who briefly held up Blanche’s vote in the Judiciary Committee — on Monday said they don’t care whether Blanche believes in the rule of law.

They didn’t use those words, but that is what their actions show.

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The path to Monday has a few twists and turns, but it is remarkably clear when it comes to the disdain Blanche has shown for the rule of law.

On May 18, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Internal Revenue Service CEO Frank Bisignano signed the purported “settlement agreement” in Trump v. IRS for the government.

That same day, Blanche issued his order laying out how much money would go into the slush fund and how it would work. Here is how Blanche began that order:

The “settlement agreement,” he wrote, “has created the Anti-Weaponization Fund.” He was merely addressing “funding and any other relevant requirements“ for it.

He repeated that language the next day when he expanded the scope of matters addressed.

Blanche added a broad, audit-related immunity for Trump and others:

The fund quickly led to multiple lawsuits, and the judge overseeing Trump v. IRS — who had already been raising questions — began asking much more specific questions about the purported settlement agreement, the fund, and the immunity provision.

By May 29, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia issued a temporary hold on the fund while considering a motion seeking a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction. After briefing and arguments on June 12, Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction keeping the fund on ice.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, meanwhile, received the broader briefing about the parties’ actions in the Trump v. IRS case. On July 13, she issued an extraordinary sanctions order, finding that the case “was brought for an improper purpose—to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.“

Although Blanche, in the interim, had claimed in testimony to Congress that DOJ was “not moving forward with the fund, period,“ this ignored the reality of the purported “settlement agreement.”

Blanche also, at that time, said the immunity provision would remain.

As Trump’s nominee for attorney general, however, Blanche faced questions from Cornyn and Tillis about the status of the immunity provision. Last week, those questions — and his responses — forced a delay on the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Blanche.

For a brief moment, then, there was the possibility of principle from two soon-departing Republican senators.

It would not last.

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After a few days of back and forth, Blanche on Sunday night announced on X that he had made changes — and signed an order “rescind[ing]” his May 18 order regarding the Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Here was the order:

Note, though, what Blanche actually wrote.

He simply wrote that his May 18 order “establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund (“Fund”) is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.”

Recall that, as he wrote in the May 18 order and the May 19 order, however, the “settlement agreement” is what “created the Anti-Weaponization Fund.” He was, in the May 18 order, simply “establishing funding and any other relevant requirements“ for the fund.

By Blanche’s own terms, in other words, rescinding the May 18 order does not rescind the Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Further still, in Blanche’s Sunday night post, there was a second announcement. This one, notably, was unsigned. It repeated the misleading statement that the May 18 order “established ‘The Anti-Weaponization Fund,’” but it also contradicted itself by implicitly stating that the May 19 order — which included the language that the “settlement agreement … has created the Anti-Weaponization Fund” — remains in effect.

Beyond that, the second paragraph — which claims the immunity provision “applies by its terms only retroactively” — acknowledged the ongoing existence in the view of the “Office of the Attorney General” (currently occupied by Blanche) of the purported “settlement agreement,” by referring to terms defined in the “agreement.”

Notably, the acknowledgement of the “settlement” is a reminder that, at any point, Trump could attempt to sue to enforce the terms of the agreement — including over DOJ’s failure to act on the creation of the anti-weaponization fund. Even Williams, in her sanctions order, noted that she was not resolving the question of whether “a private agreement between the Parties—as if ‘there is no judge’—is valid and enforceable.“

The third paragraph on the announcement, meanwhile, included a note that, as Blanche told Cornyn previously, DOJ now claims that its “interpretation” of the May 19 order is that the immunity only applies to the Treasury Department and the IRS as the “named parties” in Trump v. IRS, explicit text of the May 19 order notwithstanding.

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On Monday morning, Cornyn and Tillis made clear that they don’t care about Blanche’s mockery of the law — up through and including Sunday night’s actions.

The questionable August 2 order from Blanche regarding the fund and the claimed temporal, definitional, and party limitations on the immunity provision that were laid out in an unsigned document on DOJ letterhead were enough to remove any of Cornyn and Tillis’s alleged concerns.

Tillis and Cornyn posted versions of this statement on Monday:

This is not oversight, it is not principled, and our legal system will be worse off if Blanche is confirmed.