Senate Judiciary Committee Postpones Vote on Blanche AG Nomination Over J6 Fund and IRS Demands

Today’s Focus

The Senate Judiciary Committee scrapped its scheduled Thursday vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general, according to reporting from NPR and The Guardian.

Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, has been running the Justice Department in an acting capacity. The committee is chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Two Republicans on the panel, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), are withholding support until they receive written assurances from DOJ, The Guardian reported. Both senators lost 2026 primaries to Trump-backed challengers and are serving out their final months.

The senators want a pledge that DOJ will not disburse a $1.776 billion fund created to compensate Trump supporters who breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They also want a written commitment that the IRS will never audit or investigate the tax returns of Trump or his family, according to The Guardian’s live blog of the day’s events.

A Judiciary Committee spokesperson said in a statement attributed to Grassley’s office that the chairman “works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure.” The statement confirmed Tillis and Cornyn are seeking written assurances tied to what it called the “Trump-IRS settlement,” and said the markup was postponed while staff work to line up the votes.

NPR reported that the panel had been expected to advance Blanche’s nomination Thursday before the two Republicans signaled they would vote no without the guarantees. Blanche continues to serve as acting attorney general during the delay.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Grassley’s office framed Blanche as “highly qualified for the job” and said the postponement is procedural, not a rejection, according to the statement quoted by The Guardian. Allies note Blanche has already been running DOJ on an acting basis without a confirmation crisis.

Trump and Senate allies have argued that presidents deserve deference on Cabinet picks, and that Blanche’s experience as Trump’s lead criminal defense counsel gives him unusual command of federal criminal procedure. The nominee’s supporters point to his prior service as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York before entering private practice.

Backers of the January 6 compensation fund, including Trump, have described participants as victims of politically motivated prosecutions. Trump has publicly defended the roughly $1.776 billion program as promised restitution to supporters he says were treated unjustly by the previous administration.

On the IRS question, Trump allies argue that written guardrails against politically motivated audits of a sitting president’s family are a reasonable protection given past controversies over IRS targeting. They contend Tillis and Cornyn are asking Blanche to formalize commitments Trump has already made publicly.

Critics argue

Senate Democrats have argued the delay exposes what they call the transactional nature of the nomination. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s ranking member, has previously said Blanche’s ties to Trump make him unfit to lead an independent Justice Department, a position his office has reiterated throughout the confirmation process.

Critics say the specific demands from Tillis and Cornyn are themselves disqualifying, not for Blanche personally but for the office. Legal ethics scholars including Stephen Gillers of NYU School of Law have argued that a written DOJ pledge never to audit a president’s family would improperly bind future administrations.

Democrats and outside groups including the Project On Government Oversight have questioned the $1.776 billion January 6 fund itself, arguing it uses taxpayer money to reward people convicted of assaulting police officers. The Guardian noted that both Tillis and Cornyn want the DOJ to walk that program back, a position Democrats share for very different reasons.

Civil liberties groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have said the combined demands, a payout to J6 defendants plus permanent IRS immunity for the Trump family, illustrate what they call the politicization of federal law enforcement.

What the experts say

Nonpartisan scholars of executive branch appointments note that Cabinet confirmations rarely stall in committee under unified party control. Data compiled by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management shows that in modern Senates, attorney general nominees from the president’s party have been reported out of Judiciary in roughly two-thirds of cases without amendment.

Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University and Brookings senior fellow who studies Senate procedure, has written that lame-duck senators often exercise outsized leverage because they no longer answer to voters or party leadership. Tillis and Cornyn, both defeated in primaries, fit that profile.

On the substance of the IRS demand, the Congressional Research Service has published analyses noting that Internal Revenue Code Section 6103 already restricts disclosure of tax returns, but no statute permanently exempts any taxpayer from audit. A binding written commitment from DOJ would raise separation-of-powers questions, according to CRS reports on prosecutorial discretion.

The Government Accountability Office has reported that DOJ compensation programs of the scale contemplated for January 6 defendants, roughly $1.776 billion, would typically require congressional appropriation or a specific statutory authority, which has not been publicly identified.

By the Numbers

$1.776 billion: size of the proposed Justice Department fund to compensate January 6 defendants, according to The Guardian.

2: Republican senators, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, currently withholding support for Blanche in committee, per NPR and The Guardian.

2026: year both Tillis and Cornyn lost Republican primaries to Trump-backed challengers, according to The Guardian.

11-11: current partisan split on the 22-member Senate Judiciary Committee, per the committee’s public roster.

Section 6103: provision of the Internal Revenue Code that governs disclosure of federal tax returns, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Acting: capacity in which Blanche currently leads the Department of Justice, per NPR.