GOP Senator Accuses Trump of Weaponizing the DOJ: ‘More Intense In This Administration Than The Last One’

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) offered a scathing indictment of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump and his recent predecessors as the Judiciary Committee voted to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general.

Tillis, along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), was a key GOP holdout on Blanche’s nomination until Monday, when Blanche gave the two senators a written guarantee that Trump’s highly controversial $1.8 billion weaponization fund was dead.

Trump stunned the political world in May, when he and the DOJ announced they settled his lawsuit against the IRS and agreed to create the massive fund to pay out so-called victims of government weaponization. Critics from both parties quickly warned the effort sounded more like a “slush fund” the administration would use to give money to allies.

On Monday night, Tillis conceded that Blanche’s guarantee of the fund’s demise did not mean much.

“Now, could the president completely reverse things and create a new fund? He could, and then he can answer to the American people,” Tillis told reporters. Trump has publicly lamented the fund’s termination, leading to widespread speculation he would revive it once Tillis and Cornyn leave office in January.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Senator Cornyn. I am by no means going to match up against Senator Cornyn, a lawyer and a former judge, except to say that I believe we have addressed the concerns that I have,” Tillis told the committee, adding:

The first one — I called it the “payout pot for punks.” I’ve never liked this 1776 Fund. It made no sense to me, and I thought it was an insult to the police officers and the people who defended us on January 6th. It’s done. It’s been rescinded, and I am satisfied. I also feel like Senator Cornyn addressed the other piece of it, having to do with the audit, to my satisfaction.

You know, the thing that interests me — and I’m kind of curious about the speeches that come after this — is how everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow, and it’s the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks.

If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration. Take a look at the Obama administration. Take a look at Crossfire Hurricane. Take a look at the codes that Lois Lerner used in the IRS to target businesses, to try to unbank them. Take a look at the prospective pardons on the way out the door that President Biden gave to family members and staff members in Congress.

“The bottom line is nobody is clean here. And until we start recognizing this behavior is bad, we’re just going to one-up it — maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that one a little more intense than the prior administration, and so on and so forth,” Tillis added, conceded Trump has taken it all a step further in his view. He concluded:

But folks, we’ve got to end this stuff. We do.

I’m going to support Mr. Blanche’s nomination. But what I hope to see out of him is a bending of the curve on this absurdity. The “86 47” thing — some bonehead in North Carolina thinks that’s a crime. Well, they’d better damn sure have information to back it up, because if all it is is a picture, that person should lose his or her job. Similarly, the people who went after Republicans in the Biden administration should probably be disbarred or disciplined.

So at the end of the day, don’t act like you’re standing on some sort of moral high ground if you start attacking this administration, because I can match you almost deed for deed. What I would like to see here is people saying: instead of criticizing people on the other side of the aisle, why don’t you go back and hold your own caucus and your conference to our standard? That’s what I’m doing. That’s what Senator Cornyn is doing. And that’s what I think the American people want more of.

Mr. Chair, thank you for your patience. I know from time to time I don’t like delaying markups, but I thought this was a very important one, because we got to a good outcome, and I appreciate Mr. Blanche working in good faith. I am prepared to vote yes today on his confirmation — on moving his confirmation, his nomination, forward.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

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