WASHINGTON – Although the Trump administration says it will scrap a $1.8 billion fund for targets of Biden-era prosecutions, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and other Democrats say they’ll push ahead with legislation to ensure the president can’t change his mind.
“We’re introducing this legislation to put a permanent stop to this and make sure no president, Republican or Democrat, can abuse the Department of Justice for these kind of corrupt deals in the future,” Kelly said.
With Republican lawmakers in revolt over the proposed “anti-weaponization fund,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a House Appropriations hearing Tuesday that the DOJ would drop the idea.
Last Friday, a federal judge ordered a two-week pause on the fund. But Blanche assured lawmakers the administration will no longer try to create it.
Democrats and Republicans alike viewed the fund as a way for Trump to reward political allies, including those convicted of violence in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Many expressed concern over payouts going to rioters and others convicted of planning the attack – such as Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
On the first day of his second term, Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people involved in Jan. 6, including some who had attacked police with helmets, flagpoles and bear spray.
Officers who defended Congress against the mob that day sued to block the fund. Police in Arizona also expressed concern about the fairness and implications of providing taxpayer funds to people convicted of assaulting members of law enforcement.
“It’s a slap in the face to the many officers that were injured that day,” Patrick Burke, executive director of the nonprofit DC Police Foundation and a retired assistant chief at the Metropolitan Police Department, the local force in the nation’s capital, said by phone.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, called on the White House to abandon the fund, which had become an obstacle for Republicans in budget talks.
Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers welcomed the broad disapproval for the compensation fund but argued that legal guardrails are still needed.
“I wouldn’t put it past the president to try to reinstate and try to get this thing through,” he said. “But there is a lot of bipartisan opposition to this happening.”
He and Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan unveiled their Drain the Slush Fund Act hours before Blanche’s reversal at the House hearing.
Schiff cast the ban as a long-term protective measure against presidential slush funds and indicated he doesn’t trust the Trump administration to abandon the idea after the court’s two-week hold expired.
“It’s … clear they’re not walking away from this idea. They’re just walking away from it in this particular vehicle,” he said.
The Justice Department announced creation of the $1.776 billion fund on May 18 as part of a settlement between the IRS and Trump.
The president had sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of confidential tax records, and was effectively on both sides of the negotiation. As part of the settlement, the IRS dropped existing audits and tax claims against Trump, his businesses and family, erasing at least $100 million in potential back taxes.
That aspect of the settlement will remain in place, Blanche told lawmakers Tuesday.
Trump and others said that neither he nor anyone in his family would benefit from the compensation fund, though the president has regularly described himself as the victim of legal weaponization by the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
Trump also regularly framed Jan. 6 participants as victims of such weaponization.
By the time Trump returned to the White House and issued the mass pardons, federal prosecutors had obtained convictions against more than 1,100 people involved in the Jan. 6 attack, on charges ranging from trespassing to assault on police. The list included at least 17 people from Arizona.
Two days after DOJ announced the fund, two officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed a federal lawsuit to block it: former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, now running for a Maryland congressional seat as a Democrat, and MPD officer Daniel Hodges.
Law enforcement in Arizona also denounced the proposed payouts.
“You have somebody who legitimately committed a crime, and then they were pardoned for that crime. They still committed a crime, right?” said Michael Hunt, president of Lodge 32 for the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents state troopers.
Timothy Cesolini, a Tucson resident who runs the “South Eastern Arizona Back the Blue” and “Tucson Back The Blue Line” Facebook groups, pointed out that a pardon doesn’t mean a defendant was innocent, let alone the victim of an unjust prosecution.
“If I was wrongfully accused of something and I had to spend time in prison, then that’s something totally different,” he said. But compensation for someone involved in Jan. 6? “I don’t think so.”
Burke cited the toll Jan. 6 took on officers who faced the mob that day.
Officer Brian Sicknick, a 12-year Capitol Police veteran, died the next day after being sprayed with pepper spray. Several others committed suicide. More than 140 officers were injured.
“This is something that will live with a lot of those officers for their lives,” Burke said.
Burke expressed anger over the Trump administration’s efforts to vilify police who protected federal lawmakers as rioters swarmed the halls of Congress. The effort to compensate their attackers was deeply offensive, he said.
“They went from, in some people’s eyes, heroes to zeroes,” he said. “So I just want to make sure that these officers – our D.C., Capitol and everyone who responded that day – are recognized for their sacrifices and the good work they do every day.”
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