The Senator Trump Ignored Is Now Holding His AG Pick Hostage Over a Dead Fund

John Cornyn is having a year. First, he got absolutely shellacked in his primary race, a humbling reminder that Texas Republicans have moved on from establishment fixtures who mistake seniority for relevance. Now he’s threatening to tank Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general over a fund that doesn’t exist anymore, won’t exist in the future, and which the Justice Department has explicitly said it has no intention of pursuing.

Let that sink in. We’re talking about holding up a critical cabinet position over something that’s already dead.

The dispute centers on Trump’s settlement with the IRS from May, when the president agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit in exchange for an apology and the creation of a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. The idea was simple enough. Compensate Americans who got railroaded by federal agencies during the Biden years. You know, the kind of people who had their lives turned upside down because some bureaucrat in Washington decided they were politically inconvenient.

But then Clinton-appointed Judge Leonie Brinkema stepped in with a temporary restraining order, and the whole thing collapsed. The Justice Department backed off immediately. Blanche himself testified before Congress that they’re not moving forward with the fund, period. Full stop. End of story.

Except Cornyn doesn’t believe them. He wants it in writing, with ironclad guarantees, signed in blood apparently. The DOJ sent him a written proposal Wednesday. He rejected it. He was supposed to meet with Blanche before Thursday’s Judiciary Committee vote. He canceled. “They know what they need to do, but they simply refuse to do it,” Cornyn told Punchbowl News, sounding like a man who’s discovered the intoxicating power of being difficult.

Here’s the thing about leverage. It only works when people care what you think. Cornyn seems to have forgotten that Trump already called out Republicans like him for having “weak knees” and lacking “the stomach for the fight.” The president didn’t mince words when he told The Daily Caller that some Republican senators killed the fund themselves. Now one of those same senators is demanding written assurances about a program he helped destroy?

The political theater would be amusing if the stakes weren’t so serious. We need an attorney general. The Justice Department has been operating without permanent leadership, and every day that continues is another day the administrative state drifts without clear direction. Blanche is qualified, he’s committed to reform, and he’s exactly the kind of person we need cleaning house at DOJ.

But Cornyn is teaming up with Thom Tillis, another Judiciary Committee Republican, to extract concessions about something that already isn’t happening. With all Democrats opposed to Blanche’s nomination, a single Republican defection would kill it entirely. That gives Cornyn genuine power, at least on paper.

The question is whether he’s smart enough to use it wisely. Blocking Blanche accomplishes nothing except proving that Cornyn can still throw a tantrum. It doesn’t revive the Anti-Weaponization Fund. It doesn’t change the settlement with Trump. It just delays the work that needs doing while Cornyn nurses whatever wounds remain from his primary drubbing.

There’s a broader principle here worth defending. Federal agencies absolutely weaponized their authority against conservatives during the Biden years. The IRS targeted political opponents. The FBI surveilled parents at school board meetings. The entire apparatus of government became a tool for partisan warfare. Creating a compensation fund for victims of that abuse wasn’t some crazy idea. It was justice.

But that fight is over. The fund is dead. The settlement stands without it. Moving forward means accepting reality and focusing on what actually matters, like reforming the Justice Department so this kind of weaponization never happens again. That requires an attorney general who can start work immediately, not more Senate grandstanding.

Cornyn’s threat feels less like principled opposition and more like a man desperate to matter again. He lost his primary. Trump scorned him publicly. Now he’s found one moment where he can make everyone pay attention, and he’s milking it for everything it’s worth. The problem is nobody’s impressed. We’re just tired.

The Judiciary Committee vote is scheduled for Thursday. Either Cornyn gets over himself and lets Blanche proceed, or he proves Trump right about weak knees and kills a nomination over a non-issue. One choice serves the country. The other serves John Cornyn’s ego. We’ll find out soon which matters more to him.

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