Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a formal order late Sunday terminating President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” a move that follows weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators who were blocking his nomination to become attorney general. A spokeswoman for Texas Sen. John Cornyn, one of the senators holding up Blanche’s nomination, confirmed the deal, which comes ahead of a Tuesday confirmation vote for Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The other GOP senator, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, did not have immediate comment.
Blanche said at a June hearing that the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund to compensate those who believe they were unfairly prosecuted, as he faced bipartisan outrage over the possibility that protesters who attacked police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be considered for payments. But Cornyn and Tillis, both members of the Judiciary panel, have said they wanted to see the promise in writing before they endorsed Blanche’s nomination — especially as Trump continued to express support for the idea.
