Blanche Nominated Permanent AG; Senate Testimony Reveals Anti-Weaponization Fund Scrapped

On June 4, 2026, President Trump formally nominated acting AG Todd Blanche as permanent Attorney General, instructing chief of staff Dan Scavino to initiate the nomination process. Blanche testified before both the House and Senate on DOJ oversight on June 3-4 — his first major congressional testimony since Pam Bondi was fired April 2. In testimony, Blanche revealed the Trump administration is scrapping plans to create a $1.776–$1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” intended to compensate Trump allies whom the administration claimed were wrongfully prosecuted; the fund’s cancellation came under direct Senate questioning about DOJ oversight mechanisms. This is among the first congressional interactions with a Trump AG nominee since the departure of more than 1,000 Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Structurally, the permanent-AG nomination — announced the same day as the Bondi Epstein transcript release (see 2026-06-04--bondi-epstein-transcript-privilege-blanche-named-30-times) — positions Blanche as the mechanism by which congressional accountability over Epstein file handling is foreclosed: a confirmed permanent AG has significantly different privileges and confirmation-bargaining posture than an acting one.

The same-day convergence of Blanche’s permanent-AG nomination and the release of the Bondi Epstein transcript (June 4) is structurally significant. In the transcript, Bondi named Blanche as solely responsible for the Epstein file-release process more than 30 times — placing the entire redaction and disclosure operation under his authority while simultaneously refusing to answer questions about Trump’s knowledge. The announcement of Blanche’s nomination on that same day functions as a timeline foreclosure: the confirmation process will create a constitutional buffer between Blanche and congressional compelled testimony, insulating the DOJ’s Epstein-file handling from further congressional accountability. The anti-weaponization fund’s cancellation — a rare Trump rollback — is noteworthy but secondary: it signals the administration calculated the political cost of Senate opposition to the fund exceeded the benefit of the fund itself, not that it accepted the fund’s underlying accountability critique.

Update (2026-06-14; status reconciliation via the AI-governance re-sweep catch-all). The fund’s “scrapped” status is contested in court, which sharpens rather than closes the story. Origin: the $1.776B fund was announced by DOJ as part of a settlement in President Trump v. Internal Revenue Service — i.e., Trump dropped his own suit against the government and the DOJ he controls agreed to stand up a fund to “redress lawfare,” which legal experts (PBS) called unprecedented (a president settling with himself to create an ally-compensation pool). After the rare GOP-plus-Democrat Senate backlash, Blanche told Congress June 1 “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” But on June 12, 2026, a federal judge in Alexandria, VA extended her injunction against the fund, ruling that Blanche’s verbal assurance was an insufficient guarantee and ordering Blanche and Treasury Secretary Bessent to submit sworn written declarations within a week that the fund is dead. So the disposition is: announced → politically scrapped (verbal) → judicially distrusted (the court will not take the administration’s word that it abandoned a self-dealing settlement fund). The judicial-distrust beat is the structurally interesting part — a court treating the administration’s compliance representation as unreliable enough to demand sworn declarations.