Dick Durbin said Todd Blanche told him the Trump DOJ’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund was a mistake, then asked him to put that admission in writing before Blanche appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Durbin said the private exchange left little room for doubt.
“What more can I do? What more can I say? I made a mistake. I don’t want to see the weaponization fund go forward,” Durbin quoted Blanche as saying after their one-on-one meeting on Tuesday. He said he told Blanche the claim “seemed like a very weak defense” unless it was written down, and that Blanche would work with Congress to codify that the fund was gone and would not be used again.
The timing matters because Durbin’s comments landed on the eve of a public hearing in which Blanche is expected to face questions about the same Justice Department decisions. The $1.8 billion scheme had been announced as a way to compensate Trump allies who said they were wrongfully persecuted by the Biden and Obama administrations, and it was tied to a deal in which Donald Trump dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
That background is why the fund drew bipartisan condemnation before the Justice Department backed away from it last month. The department later said it would no longer move forward with the fund, but Blanche had not yet confirmed in writing that the scheme was canceled, leaving Durbin’s account and the department’s position in direct tension.
The Department of Justice Rapid Response X account called it unfortunate that a cordial private meeting was taken out of context, and said the Acting Attorney General looked forward to answering questions in public before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Durbin, however, said Blanche was still carrying out Donald Trump’s agenda inside a weaponized Justice Department, and he pressed him on that role along with the broader decisions around the fund. The public answer now rests with Blanche, and the sharpest question is whether he will repeat the same words in open session, or deny ever making them at all.
