The botched Blanche nomination is all about protecting Trump | Opinion
The dramatic debacle that is Todd Blanche's stymied nomination as attorney general – shrouded in political theater – is really all about protecting President Donald Trump from scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service.
A pair of recalcitrant Republicans in the Senate are blocking Blanche's nomination, with the postponement of a July 30 Senate Judiciary Committee vote and Trump's threat to withdraw the nomination – for now.
But Trump still has options – the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 and the attorney general succession act of 1977 – to keep Blanche on the job, helping him keep the IRS at bay.
Trump is clearly worried about what happens 900-plus days from now, when someone new is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2029, as America's next president. If a Democrat wins the 2028 presidential election, Trump's gargantuanly profitable second term could draw IRS audits and investigations.
That's why Trump's sham lawsuit, filed for $10 billion against the Internal Revenue Service in January, was always designed to be settled in a way that protected him from audits. Even the two-step settlement was staggered in May as an act of political theater, with the first part playing straw man to provide cover for the second part.
Remember what came first, in a settlement Blanche announced for the Department of Justice on May 18 – the obscenely corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund to pay Trump's supporters who were offended by being held accountable under the law, including rioters who trashed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
That sparked a completely predictable firestorm of criticism. And with that raging, a day later, Blanche disclosed the real motivation for the lawsuit all along – immunity for Trump, his family and their businesses from IRS audits.
Blanche, who took over as acting attorney general on April 2 after Trump fired Pam Bondi from that job, was nominated to remain in the post by the president on June 8. The IRS settlement set him on a confirmation process collision course with two Republicans in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
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Blanche gave up the game during his confirmation hearings on July 15 and July 16 in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He told senators during the first hearing that the $1.8 billion slush fund "is a moot issue" because the DOJ had dropped the idea.
But Blanche defended the IRS immunity deal for Trump during his second hearing.
The slush fund was always disposable. The IRS immunity is not.
That's what this has always been about. Trump seized an opportunity from his first term as president, after an IRS contractor illegally leaked his tax returns and was sentenced to five years in federal prison. That was the pretext Trump needed to file a lawsuit to get a settlement that provided immunity from IRS audits.
But that plan didn't work. And now Trump is scrambling, announcing in a July 30 social media post that he has "no objection to temporarily withdrawing" Blanche's nomination until next year, when Cornyn and Tillis will no longer be in office.
Tillis is retiring. Cornyn was recently defeated in his Republican primary. Trump is happy to see them go, but the looming end of their political careers gives them the freedom to make Trump unhappy about Blanche right now.
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Cornyn responded to Trump on July 30, suggesting in a social media post that the president is "mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis."
And he told MS Now, "This is about making sure that even if you're the president, you don't get favorable terms from the government, like protections from audits."
Tillis told CNN on July 30 that Trump is getting bad advice, raising the possibility that the slush fund might not be so dead after all. He also told journalists in the Capitol that the IRS immunity "makes no sense to me," is unpopular with Americans, and "is killing some of our candidates because they can't explain it."
Cornyn and Tillis want the $1.8 billion slush fund legally written out of existence, and they want Trump's IRS immunity deal to be significantly narrowed and limited.
Maybe they get there. Maybe they don't.
Either way, Blanche isn't going anywhere.
The job of attorney general became vacant on April 2 when Bondi was fired. Blanche is acting attorney general. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 lets him remain in that post for 210 days. And that clock is suspended if someone is nominated for the job, including Blanche on June 8.
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Blanche only used 68 of those 210 days before his nomination. And that clock is reset to 210 days if his nomination is withdrawn, as Trump now threatens. If Trump renominates Blanche early next year, that clock stops again.
Beyond that, the succession act of 1977 says the deputy attorney general – Blanche's actual post – serves as acting attorney general if that job has a vacancy. That law sets no time frame for his service.
So Blanche will stick around and keep fighting to protect Trump from IRS audits, because that was always the true motivation for the lawsuit and the settlement.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The botched Blanche nomination is all about protecting Trump | Opinion