Deadline: Legal Blog

US admin August 3, 2026 0 Comments

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s latest attempt to secure the job full time raises more questions than it answers, including one that should sink, rather than save, his confirmation: Has he already made his most brazen pro-Donald Trump moves in an effort to secure his confirmation, or has all of this only been an appetizer of what’s to come if he is confirmed?

The latest chapter suggests the latter.

It stems from new documents Blanche posted regarding the “anti-weaponization” fund that was poised to pay Trump supporters (including violent Jan. 6 rioters), and the separate tax immunity deal for Trump and his family. My colleague Steve Benen noted that among the questions Blanche’s move generated are its unknown legal effects and whether it will assuage enough skeptical GOP senators.

We’ll learn whether Blanche has the votes soon enough. It looks like he will, including that of the previously skeptical Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, even though Blanche didn’t go as far in the documents as Cornyn previously noted would have been required to truly modify the IRS settlement, namely because these new documents don’t contain a written agreement between the parties.

The political effects of the documents will become known soon; Blanche will either be confirmed or he won’t. The legal effects will become clear only in the context of any future events that could require courts to examine, for example, how much tax protection Trump and his family really have from the deal. That was unclear when it first came out and still is.

But while the minutiae of how much the Trump family can continue to profit from his presidency in the context of this agreement is important, this latest episode underscores a bigger problem with Blanche being attorney general.

All of this came up in the first place because Blanche, who was one of Trump’s criminal defense lawyers, agreed to approve the arrangement. It’s only now getting scrutiny, and prompting this tepid response from the Justice Department, because the Senate has leverage. If Blanche is confirmed, he could seek to continue to use his position to benefit Trump personally, whether through this specific agreement or any new schemes that the attorney general and the president concoct. It’s not limited to this one audacious deal.

Therefore, this episode is a useful illustration not only of how Blanche has helped Trump personally already, but also as a signal of what he is willing to do if he finally wins the prized job he has been fighting for. He needed to be brought to the brink of failing to win confirmation, and only then to produce a response that doesn’t remove the personal benefits he helped bestow on the president and his family. If his foot-dragging response is what happens when the Senate has the most leverage over him, one can only imagine what happens when he is freed from that constraint and the only real one remaining is how long Trump wants to keep him in the job.

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