Blanche ‘scraps’ the Trump Fund and is set to be confirmed as Attorney General

Todd Blanche has yielded (at least in part) to the demands of two dissenting Republican senators and is set to be confirmed as the new US Attorney General, that is, as the Minister of Defence in the Republican administration. And this is despite the fact that Donald Trump himself, last weekend, continued to fuel the row (one of the most serious of this term) by openly defying his own MPs.

The concessions, set out in writing in an executive order issued by Blanche (and therefore authorised by the White House), concern the scrapping of the $1.8 billion fund, which – amid much controversy – was intended to compensate Trump supporters who had been ‘deliberately’ targeted – according to the tycoon himself – by the Department of Justice during the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Among these alleged victims to be compensated for the political attacks by the Democratic administrations were also supposed to be the frenzied right-wing supporters who, on 6 January 2021, stormed the Capitol in Washington, challenging Biden’s victory and demanding the overturning of the election results to send Trump to the White House. In the clashes on that day – a deeply tragic one for American democracy – a police officer and four protesters died, whilst dozens of police officers were injured. ‘This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that the Fund does not exist,’ wrote Blanche.

A second request accepted by Blanche to secure approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee concerns, however, the reduction in the scope of the blanket immunity that Trump had granted – to himself, his family and his companies – to protect his business interests from any legal action, past or future, relating to taxes and tax returns filed. In this case, Blanche stated that the tax shield will protect the President, two of his children and the Trump Organisation, but not other family members or associates. And that it will cover returns already submitted to the tax authorities ‘but not future ones’, ‘only’ against action taken by ‘the Inland Revenue and the Treasury’. ‘The tax measure,’ Blanche explained, ‘by its very nature, applies exclusively retrospectively.’

Two Republican senators had challenged and blocked the appointment of Blanche – formerly Trump’s personal lawyer and the president’s right-hand woman in targeting his current political opponents with investigations – namely John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who are usually firmly aligned with the majority supporting Trump but are now at odds with the party because they were not nominated as candidates for the mid-term elections.

Cornyn, from Texas, and Tillis, from North Carolina, had challenged the creation of the so-called ‘Anti-Weaponisation’ Fund and the immunity Trump had granted himself: two measures resulting from a settlement to end the $10 billion lawsuit brought by the President himself against the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service – and thus against his own administration’s tax authority. Following Blanche’s executive order, the two announced they would vote in favour of Blanche: “We wish to express our gratitude to Todd Blanche and his staff for working with us; we look forward to voting soon to advance his nomination to the Senate Judiciary Committee,” they said in a joint statement.