Cornyn Makes It Absolutely Clear He’s ‘Prepared to Vote No’ On Trump’s AG Nominee

MS NOW senior Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali managed to speak to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) live on air Thursday and pressed the key GOP holdout on whether he would vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.

Cornyn has said he would only vote to advance the nomination of the current acting attorney general and Trump’s former personal lawyer, if the DOJ rewrote the settlement behind President Donald Trump’s so-called weaponization fund in a way that unequivocally killed the fund.

MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle interrupted her program, saying, “Ali’s actually talking to John Cornyn right now. I want to go there.”

“Managed to conform the settlement documents in the tax lawsuit to where the sworn testimony was in the hearing, and I’d be satisfied with that. But I don’t know — somebody somewhere, I don’t know whether it’s the White House or somebody who works there or somebody who works for the President — is basically telling them, ‘Don’t agree to those terms.’ And so we’re kind of back to square one,” Cornyn says as the feed gets picked up.

“We’re live right now on MS NOW. I think, as you think through what you need from DOJ on this — if they’re not able to give you the narrower look at that IRS immunity deal, does that mean you’re willing to vote no?” Vitali then follows up.

“I think I am prepared to vote no, but I do think I owe it to my constituents and to Mr. Blanche to try to negotiate in good faith, and that’s what we’ve been doing. So we’ll see where things are this morning and see where we go from here,” Cornyn replied.

“Have you talked to the President? No. Would a call from him help?” Vitali pressed.

“Yeah, he could fix this in a minute. But I don’t know who he’s listening to, or whether he’s motivated to do that. So we’ll see what happens,” replied Cornyn.

“He was saying he thinks that this might be because you don’t like him,” Vitali followed up.

“You know, I voted with him 99.3 percent of the time — that has nothing to do with it. This is about making sure that even if you’re the President of the United States, you don’t get favorable terms from the government in a settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get, like protection from audits by the IRS into the foreseeable future. So I think this is about making sure that we maintain the integrity of our justice system and fairness for everybody involved,” Cornyn replied.

“I appreciate you, Senator. Thank you. So, Steph — I mean, you heard from Cornyn right there, talking about where this thing stands. It doesn’t sound like they are closer to getting a resolution,” Vitali then reported, adding:

He talked about — I think this was before you came to us live — he talked about how every time he thinks they’re getting to a point where there’s some kind of deal that could get him to yes, someone else throws a wrench in it.

And I asked him, “Okay, well, what’s the wrench right now?” And he seemed to focus in on the IRS piece of the deal that you and Carol were talking about when I turned away to talk to him. So — I mean, what I hear from him there: him saying, “I’m ready and prepared to vote no, the president hasn’t called me,” and that this is about just making sure the justice system works for everyone the same way. I mean, that’s a senator who seems like he is ready to buck his party. But ultimately, we’ll see what we see.

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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