Sen. Thom Tillis entered Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting prepared to rescue Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general.
Then the North Carolina Republican delivered a warning that could place one of Blanche’s own prosecutors in danger.
If the federal criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey is based only on a photograph of seashells, Tillis declared, the prosecutor responsible “should lose his or her job.”
The extraordinary demand came moments before Tillis voted to advance Blanche’s nomination—creating a striking contradiction at the center of the hearing.
Tillis was helping elevate the man currently leading Donald Trump’s Justice Department while accusing that same department of potentially pursuing an indefensible prosecution against one of the president’s most recognizable enemies.
“The ‘86 47’—some bonehead in North Carolina thinks that that’s a crime,” Tillis said.
“Well, they better damn sure have information to back it up, because if all it is is a picture, that person should lose his or her job.”
The case involves an image Comey posted showing seashells arranged to display “86 47.”
Prosecutors contend the numbers conveyed a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey’s lawyers argue that the image represented political expression and that the government is attempting to criminalize an ambiguous anti-Trump message.
Comey has denied intending any threat.
Tillis did not declare that the entire prosecution was necessarily illegitimate. His warning included an important qualification: Prosecutors may possess additional evidence that has not yet become public.
But if the case rests only on the photograph, the senator said, bringing criminal charges would be so unjustifiable that someone should be fired.
That was only one explosive moment in a hearing already dominated by accusations that the Justice Department had been transformed into a political weapon.
For two weeks, Tillis and Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn blocked Blanche’s nomination from advancing.
They demanded legally meaningful assurances that the administration’s controversial $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” would never distribute money to Trump allies claiming they had been politically persecuted.
Critics feared the program could become a taxpayer-funded compensation system for January 6 defendants and other people favored by the president.
Tillis called it a “payout pot for punks” and said it insulted the police officers who defended the Capitol.
On Sunday night, Blanche issued a written order rescinding the Justice Department directive that established the fund. He also clarified that a separate agreement limiting certain IRS actions involving Trump and his family applied retroactively and did not provide blanket protection from future audits.
That was enough for Tillis.
“It’s done. It’s been rescinded, and I am satisfied,” he announced.
But legal experts dispute whether Blanche’s order actually kills the fund permanently.
The original program emerged from a settlement involving Trump, the IRS, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department. Blanche rescinded the internal order intended to implement the fund, but the settlement itself reportedly still contains language referring to it.
Former Justice Department attorney Rupa Bhattacharyya told CBS News that Blanche’s order does not prevent the program from being revived through another directive, lawsuit or settlement.
“There are all sorts of ways this can come back,” she warned.
Trump himself added to the uncertainty by defending the concept and threatening to pursue it through legislation if Cornyn and Tillis continued blocking Blanche.
That means the Republican senators accepted a promise from Blanche that the president openly disagrees with—and one that a future Justice Department order could potentially reverse.
Tillis nevertheless used the hearing to broaden his criticism beyond Trump.
He invoked the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the Obama-era controversy involving IRS scrutiny of conservative organizations and Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons before leaving office.
“Nobody is clean here,” Tillis said.
Then came an even more remarkable admission.
“Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration.”
A Republican senator was supporting Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department while publicly suggesting that its politicization may be worse under Trump than under the Democratic administrations he had just condemned.
Tillis framed his vote as an attempt to reverse that trajectory.
“What I hope I see out of him is a bending of the curve of this absurdity,” he said of Blanche.
The committee ultimately advanced Blanche’s nomination by a 12–10 party-line vote. Every Republican voted yes, and every Democrat voted no. ABC News confirmed the result and the agreement that secured Tillis and Cornyn’s support.
Blanche now moves toward a vote by the full Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-seat majority.
His confirmation is likely—but not guaranteed.
Other Republican senators have expressed concerns, and Tillis carefully described himself as prepared to support Blanche during the committee vote without removing every possibility of a later fight.
The hearing therefore produced a deeply uneasy bargain.
Tillis accepted Blanche’s disputed promise that the $1.8 billion fund was dead. In return, Blanche received the vote he needed to escape the committee.
But the senator attached a public warning.
If Trump’s Justice Department prosecuted James Comey over nothing more than four digits written in seashells, Tillis expects accountability inside the department.
He voted to promote its leader.
Then he demanded that one of its prosecutors be shown the door.
