Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a formal order late Sunday terminating President Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” a controversial pool of money intended to compensate the president’s political allies, in a deal struck to secure his own confirmation as attorney general.
Blanche posted two separate orders on the social media platform X on Sunday night: one formally rescinding the nearly $1.8 billion fund, and a second clarifying the scope of a related arrangement that had shielded Trump and his family from further IRS audits, according to ABC News.
The deal behind the reversal
The move came after weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had been blocking Blanche’s nomination to become the Senate-confirmed attorney general over concerns about the fund, which critics have described as a slush fund for Trump supporters.
A spokeswoman for Cornyn confirmed the agreement, according to NPR, and the deal comes just ahead of a Tuesday confirmation vote on Blanche’s nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Hill reported that Cornyn’s agreement with the Justice Department directly cleared the path for that vote to proceed.
Natalie Yezbick, a spokesperson for Cornyn, said in a statement quoted by multiple outlets that “Sen. Cornyn has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, which will be issuing a formal order permanently terminating the anti-weaponization fund and making clear in a binding written document that the scope of the audit settlement is limited to only the plaintiffs, including the President, and the IRS.”
Blanche’s order being reposted by a spokesperson for Cornyn served as a public signal that he had secured sign-off from both Cornyn and Tillis on the arrangement, according to ABC News.
What the fund was and where it came from
The now-rescinded fund traced its origins to a legal settlement between Trump and the Justice Department resolving a $10 billion lawsuit Trump had filed against the Internal Revenue Service over what he alleged was mishandling of his tax records, according to CBC News. That settlement, finalized through a May 18, 2026 order, established the Anti-Weaponization Fund as a mechanism to compensate individuals the administration deemed to have been targeted by prior “weaponization” of federal law enforcement or tax authorities.
The arrangement drew immediate scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties, in part because of its scale, nearly $1.8 billion, and in part because of concerns that it could function as a vehicle for rewarding Trump’s political allies rather than addressing legitimate grievances against government overreach.
Blanche’s rationale for scrapping it
In a statement accompanying Sunday’s order, the Justice Department said that Blanche had “repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward,” and that the department had made the same representations to district courts. The statement noted that since the IRS settlement was announced, “no members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid.”
“This order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026 order,” the Justice Department said, adding that “this order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”
Limits on Trump’s tax audit immunity
Beyond terminating the fund itself, Blanche’s second order narrowed the scope of a related provision from the original settlement that had granted Trump and his family broad immunity from future IRS audits. According to NPR, the clarified document specifies that the tax audit immunity agreement “applies only retroactively” to claims that were already open at the time of the settlement, meaning it does not shield the president from examination of tax filings going forward.
CBC News reported that the original arrangement had barred the IRS from pursuing audits into past tax claims for Trump, his relatives and his companies for any returns filed before May 18, 2026, a provision that had been among the chief objections raised by Cornyn and Tillis during their standoff with the administration over Blanche’s nomination.
The Justice Department’s statement further noted that Blanche “stands by all of his July 15, 2026, Senate Judiciary Committee testimony,” including his answers to questions posed by Cornyn specifically about the scope and applicability of the original tax order, an apparent effort to reinforce the credibility of his prior assurances to the committee.
A path cleared for confirmation
The resolution removes what had been the central obstacle to Blanche’s confirmation as the Senate-confirmed attorney general, following his period serving in an acting capacity. With Cornyn and Tillis’s objections addressed through the written commitments in Sunday’s orders, the Senate Judiciary Committee is now positioned to proceed with its scheduled Tuesday vote on his nomination.
The episode illustrates the degree of leverage individual senators can exert over presidential nominees even within a Republican-controlled Senate, particularly when nominees are tied to controversial policy actions connected to Trump personally. Cornyn and Tillis’s ability to extract a written, binding commitment terminating a nearly $1.8 billion fund, and narrowing the scope of a tax immunity arrangement protecting the president, underscores how nomination fights have increasingly become vehicles for policy concessions in the current Congress.
What comes next
With the fund formally dissolved and the audit immunity language clarified, attention now shifts to Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee vote and the broader question of how the Justice Department will handle any future claims related to the underlying IRS lawsuit settlement, given that the mechanism originally designed to process such claims no longer exists.
The reversal is also likely to draw continued scrutiny from congressional Democrats and government watchdog groups, who have raised concerns throughout the controversy about the propriety of using settlement funds tied to a president’s personal legal dispute with a federal agency to compensate his political supporters, even though the fund itself was ultimately never activated.