Sen. Bill Cas­sidy defends ‘gra­da­tion of gray’ deci­sion to back Blanche as attor­ney gen­er­al

Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R‑LA), whose vote proved cru­cial in con­firm­ing the president’s nom­i­nee for attor­ney gen­er­al, defend­ed his deci­sion to back Todd Blanche.“If you’re look­ing for a black or white deci­sion here, you’re not going to find it. This is a gra­da­tion of gray,” he said in a Sun­day inter­view with CBS News host Mar­garet Bren­nan on Face the Nation.Sens. Lisa Murkows­ki (R‑AK) and Susan Collins (R‑ME) were the only Repub­li­cans who vot­ed “no” to Blanche’s con­fir­ma­tion. If there were any more, Blanche’s nom­i­na­tion would have been sunk.
Sens. John Cornyn (R‑TX) and Thom Tillis (R‑NC) pre­vi­ous­ly expressed con­cern over Blanche’s nom­i­na­tion, but the two sen­a­tors were even­tu­al­ly won over after the act­ing attor­ney gen­er­al rescind­ed the $1.776 bil­lion “anti-weaponiza­tion” fund.
The fund was part of a con­tro­ver­sial set­tle­ment between the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who sued the IRS over his leaked tax returns. The set­tle­ment also pro­tect­ed Trump, his fam­i­ly, and busi­ness asso­ciates from tax audits.
Cas­sidy said he trust­ed the con­clu­sion of Cornyn, a for­mer Texas attor­ney gen­er­al, that the process to rein­state the anti-weaponiza­tion “effec­tive­ly is dead.” Cas­sidy not­ed that because he is not an attor­ney, he had to rely on oth­ers to under­stand the legal ques­tions sur­round­ing the fund.

Adver­tise­ment

“I’m rely­ing on oth­ers that are bring­ing me infor­ma­tion, and I have to trust them on th …