Todd Blanche has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge a retiring Republican senator to defy President Donald Trump and vote against his confirmation as attorney general.
The White House has been actively pushing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to confirm Blanche, currently the acting attorney general, but political scientist and ethics expert Norman Ornstein said Trump's nominee
has applied another type of pressure in written responses to the outgoing senator's questions.
"Blanche is daring @SenThomTillis to vote against him," Ornstein posted on X. "It is a real test of Tillis’s spine and moral character. He knows full well how utterly unqualified and dangerous Blanche is. If he provides the vote to confirm this monster, that will be the act that defines his public service."
Ornstein's warning was predicated on an X post by Benjamin S. Weiss, a congressional reporter from Courthouse News, who highlighted some of Blanche's responses the GOP senator's concerns about the so-called weaponization fund established by the Department of Justice as part of a settlement of the president's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over leaked tax documents.
"In written responses to @SenThomTillis, TODD BLANCHE repeatedly refuses to answer questions about whether DOJ needed to justify its $1.8B weaponization fund to Treasury or how it derived the cash for the fund," Weiss wrote. "Blanche says it would be 'inappropriate' to discuss internal talks."
Tillis asked the nominee if he would move forward with the fund, which Blanche has declared as "dead" in the face of court challenges, the acting attorney general refused to comment on what he called "hypothetical communications," but he did tell Tillis in his responses that he would commit to working with senators to eliminate the fund through legislation.
The general consensus among other GOP senators is that Tilllis, who is leaving Congress after his term ends in January, will vote to confirm Blanche.
“Tillis, we think, is squared away,” one source told Politico.