WASHINGTON — A Republican civil war is emerging over President Donald Trump’s stalled attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche.
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President Donald Trump is now threatening to pull Blanche’s nomination until next year after retiring Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) continue to demand to see in writing Blanche’s promise that the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion weaponization fund is dead.
The back-and-forth has some rank-and-file Republicans starting to vent publicly after the Senate Judiciary Committee canceled its nomination vote on Blanche, scheduled for Thursday morning.
“It’s ridiculous,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story of Cornyn, who lost his primary to Trump-backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “It’s just sour grapes. That’s all it is.”
“Trump was saying maybe Cornyn’s mad at him?” Raw Story pressed.
“I’m sure he is. Cornyn’s been up here long enough. You know, been up here that long, you need to go home,” Tuberville said. “But at the end of the day, some of these people need to learn that it’s time to pack your bags and go back to normal life and reap what you sowed.”
The frustration’s palpable, even if few GOP senators are willing to go as far as Tuberville — publicly, at least.
In Blanche’s more than a day-long grilling of a nomination hearing earlier this month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the acting attorney general promised the special fund to pay the president’s aggrieved allies — like the Jan. 6, 2021 felons the president pardoned — was dead, which was good enough for most Republicans, just not Cornyn and Tillis.
“He looked us in the eye and said that that was dead, so I don’t know what their hang-up is right now,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told Raw Story.
Marshall says now’s no time to derail the Republican Party priorities that the DOJ’s been tasked with.
“We’re calling for a special counsel to investigate the origin of COVID, to investigate what’s going on with this. All the whistleblowers that [Dr. Anthony] Fauci was able to squelch. I mean, that’s about one example,” Marshall said. “In this country, fraud is so rampant. We need an attorney general out there throwing bad people in jail.”
“And do you think this is sour grapes because the president didn’t back them?” Raw Story asked.
“Look, you know, we’re all human beings,” Marshall said. “We all have some emotional baggage going with us, but I think they’re sincere, too. I think that they’re sincere people and they’re good people.”
“But now that they’re on their way out and making a stink, is that annoying?” Raw Story pressed.
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“Look, we gotta stay together. Whatever it takes for us to stay together as a team. The last thing we need is any type of Republican on Republican violence going on,” Marshall said. “I don’t know if this rises to the level of violence, but it’s not helpful.”
Cornyn and Tillis are retiring at the end of this year, which seems to have loosened them both up. But they deny they’re on a vengeance tour against Trump.
“Some of your Republican colleagues say this is just sour grapes,” Raw Story asked Tillis. “What do you make of that?”
“You’re probably talking to a very small percentage of people here whose opinions I could care less about,” Tillis told Raw Story.
When asked if Blanche would have a better chance of being confirmed as attorney general next year when they’re gone, Tillis demurred.
“I’ve said, I’m not a no. I’m still working on getting this done,” Tillis said. “And I’m still optimistic that we will.”
This Republican-controlled Senate has already confirmed Blanche once, just not to a Cabinet-level position, which is why Tillis and Cornyn say they’re not trying to derail his nomination. They just want to see Blanche’s promises enshrined in text.
“Blanche is going to continue to be the deputy attorney general, because he’s been Senate confirmed,” Cornyn told a scrum of congressional reporters Thursday. “But I’d like to get this put behind us and move on to other things.”
To Tuberville, Cornyn risks tarnishing his 24-year career as a U.S. senator by holding up President Trump’s agenda as he heads for the exit.
“It’s a bad look. A bad look for John. You don’t go out that way. He’ll be looked at as somebody that just doesn’t like the guy that didn’t endorse him,” Tuberville said. “I mean, you still got to vote for your state. My God.”
When it comes to the so-called weaponization fund, Tuberville’s fine with his fellow Republicans opposing it, but the Alabama gubernatorial candidate says that’s no reason to block the Senate from proceeding with Blanche’s nomination.
“Don’t hold that against someone. I mean, just vote against it,” Tuberville said. “That just goes to show you when they have sour grapes, and they said, ‘we’re not going to do this if we don’t get that,’ it’s like a bunch of kids.”
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