A bipartisan effort to kill President Trump’s recently released Anti-Weaponization Fund is reportedly brewing in the House as the White House and Republican leadership struggle to rein in dissent about the $1.776 billion money pool.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania Republican, and Tom Suozzi, New York Democrat, are drafting text for the bill, Politico reported Thursday.
The Trump administration unveiled the fund on Monday to compensate those who the Justice Department says were victimized by the Biden administration. The money, for anyone from the president’s allies to Jan. 6 rioters, stems from a deal to resolve Mr. Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax information during his first term.
The White House sent an overview of the money pool to Senate Republicans on Thursday ahead of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s meeting with them. The one-page summary says the fund is a “fair estimate of potential claims, given that literally tens of millions of Americans were subjected to improper and unlawful government targeting, including extensive government censorship and aggressive lawfare.”
The fund will stop processing claims in 2028, at the end of Mr. Trump’s second term, and any money left will revert to the government, according to the Justice Department.
Mr. Blanche met with a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday to answer questions about who has oversight of the fund and who can apply.
The reported effort to kill the fund includes Republicans, especially those in the Senate, skeptical or openly against it.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his third-term prospect partly due to an attack campaign spearheaded by Mr. Trump, said the money pool only adds to the national debt.
“People are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not about putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the President and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability,” the Louisiana Republican said on social media Wednesday. “This is adding to our national debt. If there needs to be a settlement, the administration should bring it to Congress to decide.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, told Spectrum News that the fund could pay out to Jan. 6 rioters, which Mr. Blanche refused to rule out on Tuesday. On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation granting blanket clemency to approximately 1,500 people charged or convicted in connection with the Capitol protest.
Mr. Tillis said the fund will “invariably put us in a position where your taxpayers dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned and now we are going to pay them for that.
“That’s absurd. When you take money from me to give to a purpose that I vehemently disagree with, that’s tyranny, and that’s what that account is.”
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.