The Trump administration is scrapping plans to create a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate allies of the Republican president, the Justice Department’s top official said Tuesday in retreating from a program that faced setbacks in the courts and a fierce political backlash that had threatened to stall key elements of the White House agenda.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said in response to questions at a House hearing on the Justice Department budget.
“Not moving forward, ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng, a New York Democrat.
“Correct,” Blanche answered.
The blunt declaration marked an extraordinary, and rare, turnabout in the face of mounting political opposition to a fund officials said was intended to compensate people who believe they have been improperly targeted by the criminal justice system. But since the fund’s creation two weeks ago, it’s been paused by a judge and lambasted by Democrats and Republicans alike who said they were troubled by a lack of oversight of the money disbursement and the potential for payouts to participants in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The fund drew concerns even from Republicans
The furor especially complicated matters in the Senate, where Republicans defiantly left town nearly two weeks ago without passing legislation to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap or scale back the compensation fund. Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned White House security money from the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all unless the administration made major changes to the plan. They had sought reassurances from Blanche before moving forward.
The $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was established to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The Justice Department had said it was an appropriate measure to correct what officials have insisted was the weaponization of federal law enforcement under the Biden administration, when Trump faced criminal charges and several of his allies were investigated and prosecuted.
The administration had said that anyone who felt unfairly persecuted could apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation, but Blanche’s refusal to publicly foreclose the possibility that people convicted of crimes of violence in the Jan. 6 riot could get payouts alarmed lawmakers. A five-member commission was to have been responsible for deciding on the payouts.
Trump still got immunity from tax audits though. We still lost.
The next president can just reverse it though
They won’t, though.
Now let’s see the rest of those Epstein files.
I mean it’s a win for sure, but they also successfully distracted from the whole no audits ever for you and your companies and progeny thing.
I am guessing that if anyone actually tests that settlement in a court of law that it will not be worth the paper it’s written on. All it takes is one person in the IRS to grow enough of a testicle to actually call for the audit.
Apparently that whole deal is a non starter, as it’s null since Trump waited until he was president again - 6 years after the Trump family tax documents were released, (and the contractor that did it served his jail time) as the statute of limitations to bring a complaint against the IRS on such matters is two years.
Since he ALSO is head of the Executive Branch - which includes the Treasury and the IRS, there is a massive conflict of interest regarding the suit and a valid inability to show harm from the tax documents being released (since ofc, he’s the POTUS and not some schmoe living on the streets) so any punitive amount is rightly to be viewed as a policital shakedown at best, and outright theft of taxpayer money at worst.
Given that he’s facing bigger problems now that Iran closed the Straight of Hormuz again, (Israel is doing whatever the hell it wants, to no one’s surprise) and what it’s likely to do to fuel and food costs come the fall… He’s fucked no matter what.
Which… is delicious.
Mmm yes please give me a sip of that optimism and belief in the rule of law.
Rule of Law is like Tinkerbell: it exists if enough people believe in it.
I’m willing to concede that maybe that’s how the rule of law works, maybe, but that’s definitely not how Tinkerbell works.
There’s little evidence that Tinkerbell or similar fairies exist, so I can only conclude that we’re below the existential belief threshold for fairies. Probably below threshold for Rule of Law too, at least in pockets… I wonder if the fairy threshold is similarly localized, or a universal ratio of unbelieving:believing consciousnesses. Maybe a strong enough localized belief in fairies can spontaneously instantiate them, but only for a small fraction of a second before the thought changes and the fairies slip back into the void of nonbeing.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said in response to questions at a House hearing on the Justice Department budget.
“Not moving forward, ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng, a New York Democrat.
“Correct,” Blanche answered.
Bullshit. All this means is that it is too politically volatile to take up in advance of the midterms. Make no mistake, this isn’t dead. The settlement agreement is still there, and as soon as it is politically feasible, they’ll say that their concerns have been addressed and pass it.
I think it’s because the judge reopened the case to examine the obviously illegal “settlement.” This is the goons trying to avoid trouble.
Agreed. I understand why cases go moot when things go a certain way, but god damn sometimes I wish it wasn’t the case and officials still had to go through the process and explain their fuckery.
Was the slush fund something to bring to the table to give up and hope the immunity from IRS audits and investigations went under the radar?
Or they have found a more secretive and less politically damaging way of doing the same thing.
I will never believe they have given up on a grift. At most they have postponed it.
When pressed about committing to that in writing he declined. So, yeah.
