{"id":6776,"date":"2026-07-21T18:36:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6776"},"modified":"2026-07-21T18:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:36:24","slug":"blanche-doesnt-seem-to-be-giving-cornyn-and-tillis-what-they-demanded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6776","title":{"rendered":"Blanche doesn\u2019t seem to be giving Cornyn and Tillis what they demanded"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>\n            There are basically two potential roadblocks to Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation as attorney general: GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6774\">Cyclosporiasis outbreak in the US, by the numbers<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            Either Republican, who\u2019s not running for reelection in the fall, could block it by voting against him in the narrowly divided Senate Judiciary Committee.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            More than 400 pages of newly released  to senators suggest he\u2019s more concerned about Cornyn than Tillis.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But he\u2019s not giving either man everything they want just yet.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            One of the more telling sections of the extensive paperwork comes when Blanche is asked about a series of ugly comments from Mike Davis, a former Republican staffer on the committee who reportedly helped Blanche prepare for his testimony.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            While Blanche repeatedly responds by saying Davis\u2019 words aren\u2019t his own, he more explicitly rejects one Davis comment: his criticism of Cornyn.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            When Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, asks if he agrees with Davis\u2019 statement from May that the Texas Republican was \u201cout-of-touch,\u201d Blanche responds flatly: \u201cNo.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The document does not include any questions submitted by Cornyn, who was defeated by a Trump-backed primary challenger in a May runoff. But it does include a number of responses relevant to Cornyn\u2019s chief concern.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            That would be the highly controversial settlement between President Donald Trump\u2019s lawyers and the government he leads, which created a $1.776 billion \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund and gave Trump, his family or businesses immunity from past tax issues. The settlement was purportedly to resolve a Trump lawsuit against the IRS, but a judge recently ruled the entire gambit amounted to an attempt to \u201cmanipulate the judicial process.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Blanche said in his testimony last week that the fund, which could have given money to violent defendants from the Capitol attack, was \u201cdead.\u201d He also entertained ways to ensure it\u2019s not resurrected, which Cornyn said he needs to see before voting to confirm him.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But Blanche in his written responses confirms that Trump\u2019s immunity deal is still in effect. When asked if it was, he responds, \u201cYes.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            When asked if he would withdraw the immunity deal, Blanche doesn\u2019t commit to doing so. He instead says it would be \u201cinappropriate for me to comment on internal deliberations that may or may not have occurred.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Cornyn told Politico on Monday that he was still working with the administration to get the settlement amended to address both the \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund and the immunity deal.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Blanche\u2019s noncommittal response was a familiar one, it turns out. In the written responses, he says more than 160 times that it would be \u201cinappropriate for me\u201d to respond directly to a question or to do something a senator asked. He often cites a desire not to reveal internal communications.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            And one of the senators he does that with repeatedly? Tillis.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Despite the North Carolina Republican\u2019s  concerns with the  nomination, Blanche gives him that response more than 20 times.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6770\">Appeals court rejects Peter Navarro\u2019s push to overturn his conviction over January 6 subpoena<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            That includes Tillis\u2019 request for information about how the Justice Department justified the $1.776 billion amount from the settlement, how it calculated its risk if Trump\u2019s lawsuit went to trial, and who inside the department was responsible for creating the fund.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Blanche also declines to rule out bringing back the \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund if Trump requested it.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Tillis asks him: \u201cIf the President directs you to reverse your decision and move forward with the Fund, will you move forward?\u201d Blanche responds that it would be \u201cinappropriate for me to comment on hypothetical communications.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Blanche also seems to run afoul of another of Tillis\u2019 early concerns: DOJ\u2019s independence from the presidency. The DOJ has repeatedly investigated Trump\u2019s foes, often based on flimsy evidence and sometimes after he explicitly called for the investigations \u2014 a major break with DOJ norms.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            In a CNN interview last month, Tillis said he was positively predisposed toward Blanche. But he quickly added that \u201cif there\u2019s even a whiff of a lack of independence, then that could influence my vote.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Blanche has certainly seemed to provide that whiff.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            In his hearing last week, he repeatedly responded to questions about DOJ independence by noting that the department is part of the executive branch \u2014 the implication being that it\u2019s not totally independent of the president.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But Trump\u2019s nominee  arguably goes further in his written responses.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Sen. Chris Coons  asked him whether he stood by a statement he made on  Steve Bannon\u2019s podcast in April that  \u201cthere\u2019s this model out there that somehow the Department of Justice is independent from the president of the United States. That is not true.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Responding to the Delaware Democrat,  Blanche responded simply: \u201cYes.\u201d\u2019\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            At another point, though, he clarifies that he does not consider himself Trump\u2019s lawyer, a position Blanche did hold previously. At last week\u2019s hearing, he briefly said, \u201cI\u2019m his lawyer,\u201d before seeming to correct himself and saying he \u201cwas his lawyer.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            There is little evidence that independence remains a concern for Tillis.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The retiring senator has generally said nice things about Blanche. After last week\u2019s confirmation hearing, he demanded that Blanche meet with Jeffrey Epstein survivors, which Blanche quickly did.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Tillis praised him for taking the meeting, even though some of the survivors criticized his comments during that sitdown.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            As of Tuesday, more than two dozen survivors wrote to both Cornyn and Tillis urging them to reject Blanche\u2019s nomination.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Whether Cornyn and Tillis have the desire to truly fight for their demands \u2014 and hold a hard line \u2014 remains to be seen.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6768\">Trump downplays Chinese election interference five days after describing breach of historic proportions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are basically two potential roadblocks to Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation as attorney general: GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Blanche doesn\u2019t seem to be giving Cornyn and Tillis what they demanded - Relocation Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=6776\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blanche doesn\u2019t seem to be giving Cornyn and Tillis what they demanded - Relocation Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are basically two potential roadblocks to Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation as attorney general: GOP Sens. 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