Republican Sen. John Cornyn admitted “there was nothing we could do to rein in the president” after he changed his mind under pressure from Donald Trump and voted in favor of Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general.
Cornyn and fellow Republican “rebel” Sen. Thom Tillis had threatened to block Blanche’s path to the job by voting against him in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Both men insisted they wanted reassurance from the president that he would not revive an aborted $1.8 billion slush fund for people claiming they were wronged by the government.
But they caved at the eleventh hour despite Trump continuing to insist that the so-called “weaponization fund” was a great idea.
Speaking on the Hill on Tuesday, Cornyn insisted: “There’s nothing we could do to rein in the president when he said he likes the fund and he wishes it still exists.
“But the fact of the matter, it’s dead, and that’s all we could do under these circumstances.”
The Texas lawmaker lost a GOP primary to challenger Ken Paxton after Trump snubbed him to endorse his opponent. Tillis has also fallen out with the Trump administration.
But both men capitulated in a 12-10 vote with their colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of the nomination, which now goes to a full Senate vote.
Trump claimed Cornyn was seeking to derail his AG pick out of revenge for his decision to back Paxton, a claim the four-term senator has denied.
The two men had been unhappy with the role of Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, in agreeing to the slush fund as part of a deal to settle a lawsuit involving Trump and the IRS.
Tillis claimed the Justice Department had acted badly, despite agreeing to a compromise in which Blanche—and not the president—would sign a memorandum declaring the fund was dead.
“The bottom line is nobody is clean here. And until we start recognizing this behavior as bad, we’re just going to one-up it,” said the North Carolina senator.
A group of Epstein survivors criticized the senators for voting through Blanche after initially supporting the women’s campaign to stop Blanche from getting the job as America’s top lawman.
