Schumer promises actions to halt Trump’s anti-weaponization fund
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saeid democrats are launching a coordinated effort to shut down President Donald Trump’s Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund, arguing it lacks a lawful basis and is “self-dealing.” Schumer plans to target the fund during the Senate budget process, using amendments, floor votes, or other parliamentary tactics if Republicans try to limit the bill’s scrutiny.
The dispute centers on a $1.8 billion settlement-linked fund created after Trump resolved a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.Under the agreement, the IRS established the fund to compensate individuals Trump says were wrongly targeted, with a five-person committee-mostly appointed by acting attorney General Todd Blanche-deciding eligibility.Prosecutors say the money would be paid from the government’s “judgment fund,” a permanent mechanism for settling or losing lawsuits.
Trump argues the fund reimburses people he claims were improperly prosecuted, while Schumer contends it functions as a taxpayer-funded payout scheme that could benefit Trump’s political allies, including people tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. A federal judge temporarily blocked the fund, and another judge reopened Trump’s IRS-related case to investigate weather trump abused the process to create the nearly $1.8 billion fund.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) outlined on Monday a coordinated campaign Democrats are launching to stop President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund.
Trump said the $1.8 billion fund from the Justice Department was lawfully created as part of a settlement agreement he reached with the IRS to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit against the agency. The fund seeks to compensate individuals whom Trump said the Justice Department has wrongly targeted.
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Democrats believe the fund has no lawful basis, with Schumer writing in a “Dear Colleague” letter this week that it is “the most brazen act of self-dealing yet and one of the most corrupt schemes ever launched by a president.” Schumer revealed his party will seek to shut down the fund during the Senate’s budget process and to force Republicans in the upper chamber to vote on the matter, with “no fake guardrails or backroom promises to hide behind.”
“This week, Senate Democrats will launch a coordinated effort to kill the slush fund before one cent goes out the door,” Schumer wrote. “If Republicans return to reconciliation, we will be ready with amendments to shut the fund down. If they try to bury the issue, we will force them to the Senate floor. If they try to sneak behind appropriations, we will fight them there too.”
The controversy over the fund sparked in late May, when Trump reached a settlement with the IRS to resolve his lawsuit against the agency.
In exchange for Trump agreeing to drop the lawsuit, the IRS agreed to create the anti-weaponization fund. A five-person committee, largely appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is in charge of deciding which complainants receive funds from the fund. The $1.776 billion in the fund will come from “the judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation allowing DOJ to settle and pay cases,” according to prosecutors. The judgment fund, created by Congress in 1956, is a permanent, uncapped appropriation that the government uses to pay people when it loses or settles a lawsuit.
However, a federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the fund, the same day a separate federal judge in Florida reopened Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to investigate whether the president took advantage of the system to create the nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund that resulted from the settlement.
Trump has argued the fund seeks restitution and reimbursement for those whom the Justice Department prosecuted for political reasons, mostly under the Biden administration.
“This is reimbursing people that were horribly treated — horribly treated,” Trump told reporters last month. “They’ve been weaponized. They’ve been, in some cases, imprisoned wrongly. They paid legal fees that they didn’t have. They’ve gone bankrupt. Their lives have been destroyed. And they turned out to be right. It was a terrible period of time in the history of our country.”
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Schumer said Monday that the fund is corrupt and that Trump created it to benefit “personal pals,” including those prosecuted on charges of rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The facts are as simple as they are damning: Trump sued his own government, and his own Justice Department helped turn that lawsuit into a nearly $2 billion slush fund with no real oversight — a taxpayer-funded payout machine that could benefit his political allies, personal pals, MAGA loyalists, January 6 insurrectionists who beat police officers, and ultimately, himself,” Schumer wrote.
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