WASHINGTON \u2014 Instead of meeting Texas Sen. John Cornyn\u2019s demands, President Donald Trump may temporarily pull Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche\u2019s nomination for the full-time job. This comes after the Senate Judiciary Committee pushed back a vote on Blanche\u2019s nomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t need to be this hard,\u201d Cornyn told reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cornyn\u2019s hold up apparently got the attention of the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out, but apparently he\u2019s getting some pushback from higher-ups at the White House,\u201d Cornyn said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina are delaying Blanche\u2019s nomination to officially lead the Department of Justice (DOJ). They demand in writing that the Justice Department will not move forward with a fund to compensate the president\u2019s allies who claim political persecution, and that the DOJ will narrow a settlement that gives the Trump family immunity from tax audits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what he testified to under oath, so it\u2019s not like this is something new and different,\u201d Cornyn said. \u201cIt causes me concern if they don\u2019t want to put it in writing. That this is not something that is going to be enforceable in the long term because, as you know, people can change their mind later on.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Trump posted on social media that he has \u201cno objection to temporarily withdrawing\u201d Blanche\u2019s nomination and \u201cputting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post prompted Cornyn to write, the president \u201cis mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s worried about such a fund being abused or weaponized by frankly any presidency or any politician,\u201d said Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser. \u201cBut I think that he feels free to pursue this because he knows that these are his last few months in office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinhauser, who worked as Cornyn\u2019s campaign manager in 2014, acknowledges that Cornyn has more political freedom now. Cornyn lost his primary to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who got the president\u2019s endorsement. But Cornyn insists his pushback is not political retribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cSen. Cornyn does have a long track record of kind of an independent spirit on things. He has voted with President Trump, as he likes to cite, more than 99% of the time. But he has that 1% of issues that he pushes back on,\u201d Steinhauser said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he would be doing this unless he thought it was the right thing to do, and he thought he could make an impact here,\u201d Steinhauser added. \u201cThe next few weeks and months are really about his legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dispute over Blanche\u2019s nomination comes ahead of the midterm elections, when control of Congress hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real possibility that Democrats could have a really good year and potentially could take the Senate, so it is a risk counting on Republicans holding the Senate next year, but I think the president seems like he\u2019s willing to take that bet,\u201d Steinhauser said.<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether Blanche has the support of the full Senate. He could still lead the Justice Department as the acting attorney general for up to 210 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Instead of meeting Texas Sen. John Cornyn\u2019s demands, President Donald Trump may temporarily pull Acting Attorney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6329,1657,1658,3645,132,6328,102,223,287,91318,82,27,29,28,835],"class_list":["post-393143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-national-politics","tag-austin","tag-capital-tonight","tag-dallas","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-reena-diamante","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}