New Delhi, July 31 -- WASHINGTON - Todd Blanche, the attorney who defended Donald Trump through two criminal trials and was nominated to lead the Justice Department, cannot get a confirmation vote. The obstacle is not his record. It is the president he served.

Two Senate Republicans, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, are blocking Blanche's nomination over a $1.8 billion fund that Trump's Justice Department established to compensate those it says were wrongfully prosecuted during the Biden administration, according to PBS NewsHour. The fund, framed by Trump and his allies as a remedy for political persecution, has become a point of open defiance from Republican senators who see it as insulating the president and his ...