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Two Republican senators who had threatened to block Todd Blanche's confirmation as the next US attorney general, now say they are ready to offer their support.

The senators did so after Blanche, currently serving as the acting attorney general, formally withdrew President Donald Trump's plan for a fund that could have been used to compensate people prosecuted over the US Capitol riot by Trump's supporters in 2021.

"We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund," Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, the two holdout senators, said in a joint statement.

The move clears the way for Blanche to be confirmed to his job on a permanent basis.

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The proposed $1.8bn "anti-weaponisation" fund was announced earlier this year to settle a lawsuit by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns.

It would have allowed Trump allies to claim compensation for what they say were politically motivated prosecutions by previous administrations.

A second concern held by the two holdout senators was that the deal also shielded the president, his family and their businesses from IRS audits of their past tax returns. They wanted the scope of that to be narrowed.

The US Senate judiciary committee has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, which could include a vote on Blanche's nomination.

"We look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon" Tillis said.

Trump's Republican Party previously lacked the votes for confirmation of his attorney general nominee happen because Tillis and Cornyn were not sufficiently satisfied by verbal assurances from Blanche that the planned fund was dead.

Tillis had expressed concern that administration will revive the fund and said the president was still harbouring a plan to set up a "payout pot for punks".

He said the political impasse was "unfortunate" because he did consider Blanche, who is Trump's former personal lawyer, to be qualified for the attorney general job.

In a post on X late on Sunday, Blanche said he had "met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions".

Attached to Blanche's post was a copy of the written order signed by Blanche. The text says: "This Order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund."

It was also accompanied by an unsigned memo in which he said the IRS immunity would be limited to the "named parties in the lawsuit". The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Trump, his two sons Donald Jr and Eric, and the Trump Organization.

The fund plan and the tax audit provision prompted alarm among Democrats - and some Republicans - who argued it could result in payment to people who were prosecuted over the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.

Following the backlash, Blanche abandoned the plan. A federal judge also blocked the fund and expressed concerns that it breached ethical guidelines.

Prior to Blanche's two posts on Sunday, Trump himself gave conflicting statements on the future of both the fund and his nomination of Blanche to be America's top law enforcement official.

On Friday, he said the fund was "dead", but he subsequently threatened over the weekend to put the plan back on the table if members of his party did not move to approve Blanche.

Tillis and Cornyn are due to leave the US Senate when their terms expire in January.

In recent days, Trump had said he was considering withdrawing Blanche's nomination to be attorney general because the process was stalled and renominating him once the pair were out of office.

But there was also a concern, as analysts pointed out, that if Democrats won the majority in the senate during the November midterm elections, it would most certainly doom Blanche's chances of becoming the 88th US Attorney General.

 

SOURCE/AUTHOR : BBC NEWS/James FitzGerald and Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu