Republican holdouts say they will back Todd Blanche for attorney general

Two Republican senators who threatened to block Todd Blanche’s bid to permanently become US attorney general announced they will advance his nomination after he said in writing that a planned $1.8bn slush fund for Donald Trump’s allies was dead.The US Senate judiciary committee is due to vote on Tuesday on whether to approve the nomination of Blanche, who is already acting attorney general, and send it to the wider Senate for a vote.Outgoing lawmakers John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, two key holdouts on the committee who have repeatedly clashed with Trump over the past year, said their concerns were resolved after a “successful negotiation of a legally enforceable document”, which was released by Blanche late on Sunday.The document formally ends the $1.8bn “anti‑weaponization fund”, and makes clear that Trump and his family will not receive indefinite protection from audits of future tax filings.Both controversial prospects arose from an agreement reached as part of a settlement in a lawsuit Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the unauthorized leak of his tax returns. A US federal judge who oversaw the lawsuit blasted the arrangement, noting that the US Department of Justice did not make a good faith effort to defend the government, and that it appeared to be a collusive effort to engineer a beneficial result on behalf of the president.Both the fund and the scope of Trump’s immunity from tax audits became dealbreakers for Cornyn and Tillis.“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” the senators said in a joint statement. “Additionally, the department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share.“We look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate judiciary committee soon.”Just this weekend, Trump had defended the fund, and threatened to “push hard” to legislate for it. The fund would “immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done” if senators fail to approve Blanche’s nomination, the president wrote on social media.