Nothing says mature governance quite like a veteran senator allegedly holding a Cabinet nomination hostage because the president endorsed his political opponent. According to Conservative Brief, Donald Trump went full blast on Senator John Cornyn of Texas during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, accusing the longtime lawmaker of sabotaging Todd Blanche's attorney general confirmation out of pure spite.
So here's the backstory for anyone keeping score at home. Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state's Republican Senate primary, and Paxton proceeded to obliterate Cornyn. Now Cornyn, who has occupied his Senate seat for over twenty years, is apparently not taking it well. Trump claimed that the moment he threw his support behind Paxton, Cornyn's opponent "went through the roof" and won the primary. And wouldn't you know it, suddenly Cornyn has concerns about Blanche's nomination.
Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and whose vote matters for advancing the pick, is reportedly refusing to greenlight Blanche until the Justice Department provides written guarantees that a contested fund will be rescinded and that the scope of an IRS audit immunity provision from a settlement deal gets narrowed, per ABC News.
Trump was remarkably candid about the whole thing, telling reporters that Blanche is a "very, very good man" who shouldn't be used as a chess piece in someone else's grudge match. He even conceded he doesn't really blame Cornyn, which is the presidential equivalent of saying "I understand why you're being petty, but please stop."
The president also pointed out a rather inconvenient fact for Cornyn: the senator had zero problems with Blanche when he was first tapped to replace outgoing AG Pam Bondi. The objections mysteriously materialized only after Trump backed Paxton. "Senator Cornyn thought he was phenomenal, until he lost," Trump quipped. Funny how that works.
Meanwhile, the whole situation has gotten tangled up with a federal lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS after a contractor named Charles Littlejohn admitted to illegally leaking Trump's tax information and pleaded guilty to federal charges. The DOJ and IRS had reached a proposed settlement to resolve the case, which included creating what was described as an anti-weaponization fund for January 6 defendants who were persecuted by the Biden administration. That fund was later terminated.
But a federal judge in Florida, Obama appointee Kathleen Williams, rejected the proposed resolution and issued a blistering opinion questioning both the lawsuit's purpose and the settlement's structure. The administration appealed that ruling on Friday.
Trump insisted the disputed fund was never about him personally, saying it was meant for "people that have been weaponized" and "abused." He described them as perhaps the most poorly treated group of people ever.
So to recap: a senator lost his primary, an AG nominee is stuck in limbo, a settlement got rejected by a judge, and everyone is mad at everyone else. Just another totally normal day in Washington.
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