Your first month is free in The New York Times app. Download now → Good morning. Let’s start today in Washington, with a fight over President Trump’s Justice Department.
Sweet deal?After much confusion and acrimony, Todd Blanche now appears set to become the nation’s top law enforcement official. Two Republican senators who had been blocking Blanche’s confirmation for attorney general gave him their blessing yesterday, after Blanche promised — in writing — to scale back a lucrative deal the Justice Department had cut with Trump. The president’s effort to muscle Blanche, his former lawyer, through the Senate got messy this past week. There were public demands, counterdemands and counter-counterdemands. It’s easy to get so mired in the political minutiae that you forget a couple of things. First: Blanche already runs the Justice Department, and he’s allowed to keep running it indefinitely in an acting capacity, confirmation notwithstanding. So for Trump, this fight has always been more about rewarding Blanche — and exerting control over Congress — than about imbuing Blanche with any new authority. Second, and more important: Trump is still getting most of what he wants. The fine printThe Justice Department deal that knocked Blanche’s nomination off course had two main components. It established a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which Trump wanted to use to pay allies of his who claimed they had been unfairly prosecuted by previous administrations. And it granted Trump, his family and their businesses sweeping immunity from I.R.S. tax audits. In documents Blanche released on Sunday night, he said he would rescind the order establishing the fund and narrow the tax immunity to include only Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization.
That was enough to win over the two Republican holdouts, Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn. But Trump’s opponents are crying foul, saying Blanche’s memo is a political solution to a political problem rather than a legally binding document. For one, an order from an attorney general can be reversed by a future order from an attorney general. So in theory, Blanche could simply issue a new order reviving Trump’s fund. Or the Justice Department could skip the fund altogether and simply cut million-dollar settlement checks to Trump allies who claim to be victims. (It has already been doing that.) And there is no question that the I.R.S. immunity, even in its narrower form, remains immensely valuable to the president, writes Andrew Duehren, who covers tax policy. One dispute Trump had with the I.R.S. could have cost him more than $100 million, The Times reported. Other audits could have cost him even more. Andrew writes: Where the I.R.S. previously made a point of regularly auditing whoever occupies the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has leveraged his control of the federal government to instead escape the scrutiny that every other modern president, not to mention every other regular taxpayer, has been subject to. At the Oval Office yesterday, Trump told reporters that he hadn’t signed off on Blanche’s plan. “I didn’t look at it,” Trump said. “All I know is that Todd Blanche is great.”
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