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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has formally rescinded a proposal for a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund that had been part of a settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS, intended to provide supposed victims of political prosecutions with financial compensation.
Among those who could have qualified for the fund were participants in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which sought to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election after Trump lost to former President Joe Biden.
Blanche issued a written order ending the slush fund on Sunday night, stating that the decision came as part of an agreement with holdout Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) — who previously stated they would not vote to confirm Blanche as the next attorney general if the fund remained in place.
“My team and I have met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions,” Blanche’s statement said.
On Monday, Cornyn and Tillis both indicated that the announcement from Blanche was sufficient for them to approve his nomination, advancing it to a full Senate vote that will likely take place this month.
Plans for the slush fund came about in May, after Trump and the IRS settled a $10 billion lawsuit the president had filed over a leak of his tax returns years before. That lawsuit, and the subsequent agreement to settle it, were condemned by political observers, as Trump oversees every department and agency involved.
In addition to the slush fund, the settlement also restricted the IRS from performing audits on any tax filings from Trump or his family members in the past. A judge has blocked that portion of the settlement, but Blanche also issued an order on Sunday night clarifying the language of that agreement, implying that it would still be pursued.
Axios also noted that Blanche’s new order rescinds implementing the slush fund but not its creation. This suggests that the fund could be reexamined as a possibility after Blanche gets confirmed as attorney general.
In multiple Truth Social posts over the weekend, Trump demanded that the slush fund remain in place, claiming that he could simply keep Blanche as acting attorney general until such a time that his confirmation could happen without the GOP senators being able to block it.
“I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office,” Trump wrote on Friday.
In a subsequent post on Saturday, Trump reiterated his demand for the slush fund, claiming that “millions of Americans” agreed with him on its creation.
Polling suggests that more voters in the U.S. oppose the creation of the fund than support it.
Among registered voters polled in an Economist/YouGov poll in May, shortly after the fund was announced as part of the lawsuit’s settlement terms, 57 percent said they were against the idea, while only 23 percent said they backed it. Even among Trump’s MAGA base, a plurality of respondents, 45 percent, said they opposed the slush fund, while 32 percent said they supported it.
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