Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) fully admitted to folding after trying — and failing — to leverage confirmation of President Donald Trump’s cabinet picks in an effort to get him to table his controversial fund to compensate so-called victims of political lawfare.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) bent to Trump’s will on Tuesday, voting to advance acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the full chamber after previously stonewalling him for backing the president’s plan for a $1.8 billion-“anti-weaponization fund” likely envisioned to payout Trump loyalists, like participants in the Jan. 6 riots.
Following the vote, the Texas lawmaker told the press that in the end, his hands were tied.
“Well, there’s nothing we could do to rein in the president when he said he likes the fund and he wishes it still exists,” Cornyn said, adding that, “the fact of the matter, it’s dead, and that’s all we could do under these circumstances.”
His compromise came after Blanche agreed to sign a memorandum committing to not reviving the fund, though no promises are reportedly set to be made by the president.
“We didn’t have the authority to sort that out,” he said. “All we had the authority to do what we did, and I think did the best we could.”
Prior to Cornyn’s slush fund trade-off, Trump pinned the outgoing senator’s holdout strategy on personal spite.