Trump defends $1.8bn slush fund that is holding up Todd Blanche confirmation

Donald Trump has defended controversial plans for a $1.8bn slush fund even as they threaten to derail the nomination of his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche for US attorney general.

Blanche “should be immediately approved” by the US Senate, the president declared in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday morning, defending the payout scheme proposed by his officials in the Department of Justice as it holds up Blanche’s confirmation.

Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since Trump fired Pam Bondi in April, has been lined up to take the job permanently.

Under agreements to resolve a long-shot $10bn lawsuit filed by Trump against the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns, the justice department proposed the creation of a secretive fund – to be awarded with no restrictions to allies of the president – and barred the IRS from auditing his tax returns.

Democrats and some government watchdogs, however, are calling it a slush fund, and have warned it could end up paying out to defendants convicted over their role in the January 6 Capitol riot.

While Blanche later said the slush fund was dead after an extraordinary backlash, two Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee – John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina – have demanded assurancesin writing that the fund will never be activated before they back his confirmation as attorney general. Blanche has not given them that assurance, and the committee’s vote to advance his nomination was postponed this week as a result.

“I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” Trump wrote of his supporters, whom he described as “a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history”, adding: “I gave up any payments for myself, which would have been substantial … I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!

“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called ‘Fund’ … until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent,” Trump wrote. That opponent, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, beat Cornyn by roughly 28 points in May, ending Cornyn’s Senate career and making him the first Texas Republican senator to lose a renomination bid.

Blanche was previously Trump’s personal defense lawyer, representing him in the New York hush-money case and other criminal matters, before joining the justice department as Bondi’s deputy.

Judiciary committee Democrats have said Blanche privately told the senator Dick Durbin that pushing for the fund had been a mistake. He has also faced questions over his firm’s past payments from a Trump-aligned political action committee and his handling of the Epstein files.

The Senate majority leader, John Thune, has said he expects the nomination to come back for a vote once Cornyn and Tillis are satisfied. Trump has said he is willing to pull Blanche’s name temporarily and resubmit it later, once Cornyn and Tillis are “out of office”, while keeping Blanche on as acting attorney general in the meantime.