Trump defends DOJ fund after Senate Republicans push back

President Donald Trump on Friday defended the controversial new Department of Justice “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” saying, “I gave up a lot of money” in allowing it to be created.

Trump’s comments came a day after the fund received strong pushback from Senate Republicans, and some lawmakers promoted legislation that would ban taxpayer money from being used for the $1.8 billion payout pool.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, said early this week that he was creating the “lawfare fund” as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

Trump got no money in that settlement. But the fund is intended to compensate many of his supporters who allege they were victims of prosecutorial overreach by the DOJ under the Biden administration.

And Trump and his family members are getting immunity from IRS enforcement actions related to their tax returns under the settlement.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

“I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Trump said. ” Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”

Critics of the fund have called it a “slush fund,” and blasted the idea that members of the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, who were prosecuted for their actions could get payouts from it, even if they had attacked police officers that day.

On Thursday, Blanche met with Republican senators to defend the plan, but a number of them expressed dismay about it. After the meeting, in a sign of discord among the caucus, GOP leadership dropped plans to have a series of votes on a package that would fund immigration enforcement agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.

But earlier Friday, several House Republican lawmakers defended the fund in interviews with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, when asked about the fund, said Trump has “been one of the biggest victims of weaponization,” and that he considers it “an appropriate approach and use of tax dollars, as long as the guardrails exist.”

But Arrington also said, “We have to have the accountability measures and the safeguards, so that it is not a quote, slush fund, where you’re doling out monies to political allies that don’t have legitimate claims.”

“It needs to be fair and objective … that’s why I think that the Senate’s going to find a path forward,” he said.

Those guardrails could come as part of the next congressional reconciliation package, “or they could just have an agreement,” Arrington suggested.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said of the fund, “I think that there is a need for it.”

Comer claimed Trump had been the victim of “lawfare.”

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., when asked about the case settlement that led to the creation of the fund, said, “I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t know what the details are.”

“No one [knows] weaponization of government against him and his family better than Donald Trump,” Emmer said. “I suspect that whatever agreement was made, it’s fair on both sides.”

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., slammed Trump and Republicans over the DOJ fund and other of the president’s pet projects, including a new White House ballroom and a new arch in Washington, D.C.

“You can’t have what we saw on display here this week, where we have a Republican Party and president who are proposing a billion dollars for a ballroom, a $2 billion slush fund for the president, and $75 billion to further fund ICE that does not need more funding, and not a dime for the American people,” Clark said on “Squawk Box.”

The Trump administration is “almost showing contempt for them, building ballrooms and arches,” Clark said.

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