Trump DOJ fund goes back to Congress

Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday criticized Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over a controversial new Justice Department fund, hours after Blanche met with Republican senators in an effort to ease their concerns about it.

“So the nation’s top law enforcement officer is asking for an empty fund to pay people who beat the cops? Totally stupid, totally wrong — Take your pick,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement obtained by MS NOW.

McConnell was the Senate majority leader.

Blanche, earlier in the day, met with GOP senators as pushback is growing in Congress on the idea of ​​paying settlements to people who attacked police during the violence at the US Capitol in 2021.

“I think it’s stupid on stilts,” Sen. Thom Tillis, RN.C., told Spectrum News in an interview about the $1.8 billion fund, which was created to settle a lawsuit unrelated to President Donald Trump against the Internal Revenue Service.

The fund is said to compensate those who say they were victims of abuse by prosecutors or worse by the DOJ during the Biden administration, which could include hundreds of people convicted or indicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters.

“It’s always going to put us in a situation where your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars might be able to compensate someone who hit a police officer, pleaded guilty, was found guilty, pardoned, and now we’re going to pay them for that?” Tillis said.

“That makes no sense,” he added. “The American people will reject this out of hand.”

Blanche’s meeting with GOP senators came a day after Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., introduced a bill that would prevent federal money from being used for the DOJ’s “Anti-Weapon Fund,” and after two police officers secured the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed a lawsuit demanding that the fund be declared illegal.

Democrats in Congress have called the fund a “corrupt fund.”

On Thursday, Senate Minerals leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Finance Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced legislation that would tax 100% of any payments from the fund.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RS.D., told reporters Thursday, “Right now we want to hear from the attorney general about his perspective on this and what they intend to do about it.”

“But obviously, our members have legitimate questions about it,” Thune said, adding that his caucus has had discussions about “how we can make sure it’s properly fenced.”

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Blanche said that the commissioners who will be appointed to manage this fund will be responsible for considering the behavior of the complainant when applying for compensation.

“One of the things the commissioners have to look at is what the complainant did – the behavior of the complainant,” Blanche told CNN. “The complainant will have to say, ‘I hit the policeman, and I want money.’

“Whether or not the commissioners will give the money to that person – the applicant – is up to them,” said the attorney general. “But that’s one of the things they have to consider.

Blanche will appoint all five commissioners in this fund.

Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, also said the president “shouldn’t beat law enforcement.”

Blanche’s comments came after several Senate Republicans questioned the reason for the fund.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told MS NOW that he has not seen “any legal precedent” for the fund.

“People are concerned about doing their own thing, not about putting together a fund without a legal basis,” said Cassidy.

Thune himself had said he was “not a big fan” of the fund idea, according to MS NOW.

“I don’t see the purpose of that,” he said.

Wyden, in a statement on Thursday, said, “The announcement of this slush fund is incredibly corrupt even by Trump’s standards of sitting down.”