Justice Department Creates $1.776 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund to Compensate Trump Allies

The Justice Department announced Monday the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion to compensate allies of President Donald Trump who say they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted, as part of a settlement resolving Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American,” and added that the department intended “to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

ABC News

The settlement is tied to Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, and the fund is described as allowing people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes, including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for payouts.

The AP report said Blanche is expected to be pressed on the fund when he testifies Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the Justice Department budget, and it noted that nearly 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed onto a legal brief urging a judge to block the resolution.

The AP account also quoted Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying, “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”

On Tuesday, the Justice Department issued an addendum to the settlement that bars the IRS from conducting audits of tax returns filed by Trump, his family, and their companies, according to the Rural Radio Network account.

The addendum filing, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and posted to the Justice Department’s website Tuesday, states that the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from “prosecuting or pursuing” examinations or reviews of Trump or “related or affiliated individuals” and businesses.

AP News

The Guardian reported that the Justice Department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending an agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.

In the Guardian’s account, the addendum signed by Todd Blanche says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies,” and it applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached.

The AP report said a group of 93 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a challenge, and it quoted Rep. Jamie Raskin saying, “This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury.”

“The unprecedented lawsuit President Donald Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service over the unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns years ago has led to an unprecedented arrangement that will make nearly $1”

CNN

In the AP account, Raskin described the money as being poured into “a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ” and tied it to people including those who “brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021,” as well as “sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes.”

The Guardian reported that Blanche faced Senate questioning after the Tuesday amendment, and it quoted Chris van Hollen saying, “This is an outrageous, unprecedented slush fund that you set up,” during the hearing.

The Guardian also said Blanche told senators there were no limitations on who could seek a claim from the fund, and it reported that he said neither Trump personally nor his sons would receive compensation.

Meanwhile, the ABC News account said U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the case closed on Monday and wrote she was “stripped of jurisdiction” because the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, leaving her with no authority to adjudicate the private settlement.