The deal Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears to have brokered with some Senate GOP holdouts in his confirmation battle may contain a few surprises.
On Monday, reports indicated that Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis(R-NC) were willing to end their holdout and vote to confirm Blanche for the attorney general role after Blanche signed a document attesting that the Justice Department’s so-called “anti-weaponization” fund is dead. The $1.776 billion fund sought to pay people who claimed they were wrongfully convicted by the government, and President Donald Trump has said the fund has a lot of support from “big” Trump supporters.
However, the deal that Blanche brokered may not be legally binding, argued Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, on Monday’s broadcast of “The Arena.”
“It is not clear that any of this is actually binding,” Williams said. “And the biggest thing this exposes is the problem with having the president literally be on both sides of the v in the lawsuit here.”
The anti-weaponization fund was created as part of a settlement between the DOJ and IRS, two agencies that Trump oversees, in a case involving Trump’s leaked tax returns. Williams described the lawsuit as Trump suing Trump, which creates a lot of headaches for judges.
“That creates a huge legal problem that led one of the judges that looked at this to say, ‘Wait a second, there isn’t even a controversy here. I can’t even adjudicate this.’ This is a big problem,” Williams said.
Kate Beddingfield, a former White House communications director for the Biden administration, added that Blanche’s deal also created political vulnerabilities for Trump.
“[This] is actually a pretty significant political vulnerability for Trump,” Beddingfield said. “This notion that he is focused on himself, that he is focused on enriching himself and his family. This is actually one of the big liabilities that Trump has out in the country. And one of the reasons that his favorability is so low.”
“I also think just the idea that Donald Trump is going to adhere to any kind of independence of the Department of Justice, which he’s made very clear he’s not interested in, or adhere to any written piece of paper, period, of any kind to constrain him if he decides he wants to move forward with this.”
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