Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination got a major boost Sunday night after Sen. John Cornyn said he reached a deal with the Justice Department to shut down a controversial settlement provision that had stalled the confirmation fight.
The Texas Republican had been one of the key GOP holdouts on Blanche’s nomination, demanding written assurances that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” tied to President Donald Trump’s IRS settlement would be permanently killed.
Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi resigned in April, posted documents on X that appeared to address Cornyn’s demands ahead of a scheduled Tuesday vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The order rescinds the payout fund and states that it “is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.”
It also says the “DOJ’s interpretation” of the settlement is that the audit agreement applies only to “the named parties in the lawsuit.”
That language could clear the way for Cornyn to back Blanche, giving Trump’s nominee a much cleaner path through committee after days of Republican infighting.
With Democrats opposed, even one Republican defection on the Judiciary Committee could have blocked Blanche’s nomination before it reached the full Senate.
Cornyn’s office announced the agreement Sunday, saying DOJ would issue a formal order ending the disputed fund and narrowing the audit settlement language.
“Sen. Cornyn has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, which will be issuing a formal order permanently terminating the anti-weaponization fund and making clear in a binding written document that the scope of the audit settlement is limited to only the plaintiffs, including the President, and the IRS,” said Natalie Yezbick, the Cornyn spokesperson.
Blanche said in his X post that he and his team “addressed any concerns or outstanding questions” senators had about the matter.
The deal came after a 72-hour stretch in which Trump repeatedly blasted Cornyn and publicly suggested he regretted that the fund had been withdrawn.
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The fund had been intended to pay settlements to Trump political allies who said they were targeted by government weaponization.
On Friday, Trump suggested he could pull Blanche’s nomination and resubmit it next year, after Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both leave Congress.
Tillis had also been a swing vote on the Judiciary Committee and raised concerns about the settlement.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a formal order Sunday night terminating President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate political allies.
A spokesperson for Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, one of the senators holding up Blanche’s… pic.twitter.com/sy3CsxSC5f
— The National Desk (@TND) August 3, 2026
But he signaled Saturday that he was willing to follow Cornyn’s lead if the language was fixed.
Tillis wrote in an X post that “President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks” and that “it’s unfortunate that Todd Blanche, who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal. Hopefully, we can resolve this by Tuesday.”
The Sunday deal now gives Todd Blanche a better shot at advancing out of committee before senators leave Washington for the August recess.
Senate GOP leaders have been pushing to confirm Blanche by the end of the week, giving Trump a permanent attorney general after months of political turbulence at DOJ.
Blanche has been a central figure in Trump’s legal orbit and a loyal defender of the president’s push to root out what Republicans call the weaponization of federal law enforcement.
That made the holdout from Cornyn and Tillis especially frustrating for Trump allies, who viewed the dispute as another case of Senate Republicans slowing down one of the president’s own nominees.
Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would… https://t.co/OSoFTAKUkE
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) August 1, 2026
But Cornyn framed the fight as a narrow demand for written language, not a rejection of Blanche himself.
The order appears to give him exactly that.
Now the question is whether Judiciary Republicans treat the matter as closed when Blanche comes up for a vote Tuesday.
If Cornyn and Tillis are satisfied, Democrats will be left opposing Blanche without the GOP defectors they needed to bottle up the nomination.
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