President Trump said he would consider temporarily withdrawing Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination rather than bow to two Republican senators blocking the confirmation, a standoff that now threatens to drag past the August recess.
Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that he has "no objection" to shelving Blanche's name and resubmitting it once Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are out of office. Both senators' current terms expire in January 2027. The move would leave Blanche, already serving as acting attorney general, in that role indefinitely while the White House waits out two members of its own party.
The Senate Judiciary Committee had been set to vote Thursday on advancing Blanche's nomination. Late Wednesday, the committee postponed the markup, less than 24 hours before it was scheduled, after Cornyn and Tillis made clear they would not vote yes. A committee spokesperson said work was continuing "to secure sufficient support" for Blanche, whom the spokesperson called "highly qualified for the job."
The dispute centers on a controversial IRS lawsuit settlement Trump reached with the federal government. That deal created a proposed $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" and, according to the holdout senators, granted Trump and his family immunity from future tax audits. Cornyn and Tillis want the Department of Justice and Blanche to confirm in writing that the fund is permanently eliminated and that the audit immunity covers only existing audits, not future tax filings.
Blanche has resisted putting that commitment on paper. The DOJ sent Cornyn an updated offer Wednesday night, CBS News reported. Cornyn sent back a counter-proposal Thursday.
Cornyn told CBS News his demand is straightforward:
"We want to make sure that it remains dead, and that the president isn't given any immunity from future audits that the ordinary taxpayer would not enjoy."
He put it more bluntly in a separate exchange reported by the Associated Press: "We've been trying to help them get to a conclusion here and they won't let us. It's befuddling to me."
A federal judge previously ruled in what AP described as a scathing decision that Trump had engaged in self-dealing through the IRS lawsuit. That judge also raised concerns that Blanche had signed the settlement given his prior representation of Trump.
Trump's Truth Social post did not treat the standoff as a policy disagreement. He framed it as personal defiance from two senators whose political futures he had already ended.
"Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time. However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting."
He added: "I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office."
Cornyn fired back on X within hours. "POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis," he wrote. That claim, that other Republicans share the concern, went unconfirmed Thursday, but it signals the opposition may extend beyond two seats.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, another outgoing Republican, gave no reassurance. He told CBS News that "Todd Blanche cannot give commitments that Cornyn and Tillis want." Asked whether he would support Blanche if a vote were held that day, Cassidy declined: "I'm not going to answer that because I'm still in the information gathering stage."
That matters because the math on the Judiciary Committee is tight. Just one Republican "no" vote would effectively prevent Blanche's nomination from advancing to the full Senate floor.
Late Thursday afternoon, Blanche sat down with Cornyn and Tillis at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters in Washington. Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed the meeting to CBS News. A source familiar with the session said it lasted a little over 45 minutes and that the parties were "working collaboratively" toward a resolution.
Tillis struck a somewhat more optimistic tone than Cornyn. He told Fox News, "I've said I'm not a no. I'm still working on getting this done, and I'm still optimistic that we will." But he also pointed a finger at the White House, saying he believed an unnamed adviser was "giving the president bad advice."
Tillis added a sharper observation about the written assurances the DOJ has so far refused to provide:
"The only reason why we wouldn't move forward with this language is because that same adviser wants to bring it back to life at some point."
That accusation, that someone inside the White House wants to preserve the option of reviving the anti-weaponization fund, goes to the heart of the standoff. If the fund is truly dead, Cornyn and Tillis argue, putting that in writing should cost the administration nothing.
Trump's gambit rests on a simple bet: pull the nomination, wait out Cornyn and Tillis, and resubmit Blanche to a friendlier Senate in 2027. Cornyn suggested that calculation carries risk.
"Nobody knows what's going to happen in the November election, and he may have less Republicans to vote on confirmation next year," Cornyn told CBS News. "I frankly don't understand why they're trying to escalate the fight."
If Republicans lose seats in the 2026 midterms, a renominated Blanche could face an even narrower path, or no path at all. Newsmax noted that Trump indicated Blanche would remain as acting attorney general regardless of the nomination's fate, but the acting designation carries less institutional weight and no Senate mandate.
The dispute also raises a question neither side has answered publicly: what, precisely, does the IRS settlement say about future audits? Cornyn has demanded changes to the agreement's audit-immunity provisions. The specific terms of that settlement have not been disclosed in any of the public exchanges. Cornyn told reporters the DOJ needs "concrete confirmation of what he testified to", a reference to prior assurances Blanche apparently gave during earlier discussions.
No agreement emerged from Thursday's meeting. The Senate Judiciary Committee has not rescheduled its vote. And the August recess looms.
When a president's own party asks for a straightforward written promise and the answer keeps coming back as anything other than "yes," voters are entitled to wonder what exactly is being protected.
