Republican lawmakers are expressing skepticism about a Justice Department fund created to provide money for people who feel they have been politically persecuted.
On Monday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced he was allocating $1.776 billion of taxpayer money for a new “Anti-weaponization Fund” to pay out claims from “others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
But lawmakers are concerned about lax oversight for doling out the money and who would benefit from it. Congress will have limited oversight of the fund as it would be run out of DOJ.
“I need to know where the money is going to come from,” Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Tuesday. “I need to know who would qualify. I need to know the definition of weaponization. I need to know who’s been weaponized against.”
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The fund was created as part of a settlement to a lawsuit President Donald Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service over a public leak of his tax return records. Beyond the funding, the settlement would “forever” bar the IRS from pursuing future legal action against Trump’s family members and other “affiliated individuals.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, also a Louisiana Republican, is another skeptic.
“We are a nation of laws. You can’t just make up things whole piece,” said Cassidy. “People are concerned about making ends meet, not about putting a slush fund together without a legal precedent.”
The Justice Department said the money for the fund would come from a permanent and indefinite appropriation started by Congress in 1956 called the Judgment Fund. The money allows the department to settle cases without continually having to seek those dollars from Congress.
The weaponization fund will be administered by five commissioners, four of whom will be appointed by the attorney general. The final member will be chosen with input from Congress.
“There are and will continue to be a lot of questions around that the administration is going to have to answer,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky called the creation of the taxpayer-fueled fund unprecedented.
“I’ve never heard of someone negotiating with themselves and making a plea bargain with themselves,” Paul told NOTUS.
At a Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing Tuesday, lawmakers peppered Blanche for details on the fund.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the committee, asked if the department has ever used the Judgement Fund “to pay claims that have yet to be brought against the United States government based on the settlement of a completely unrelated case?”
Blanche pointed to Keepseagle v. Vilsack, an Obama administration settlement in which Native Americans sued the Department of Agriculture for discrimination. He argued that only some Native Americans had filed suit at the time, and that the administration created a “very similar” fund.
“By the way, it is true that this is unusual, that is true,” Blanche said. “But it is not unprecedented, and it was done to address something that had never happened again either.”
Democrats on the committee expressed worry that rioters who protested inside and outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 could benefit from the fund.
“You created a $1.8 billion slush fund to dole out taxpayer dollars to the President’s supporters, including those who attacked this Capitol on January 6,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said during the hearing. “That is pure theft of public funds, and rewarding individuals who committed crimes is obscene”
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons told Blanche that he spoke with police officers who were concerned that protesters who assaulted police officers “could receive multi-million dollar payouts.” He asked Blanche to “commit” that wouldn’t happen.
Blanche said the commissioners would decide who is compensated. “Anybody in this country can apply,” he said.
At a White House news briefing, Vice President JD Vance defended the fund as “about compensating Americans for the lawfare” from the Biden administration. He said people who apply for the funding would be reviewed on a “case-by-case basis.”
“We do have In this country innocent until proven guilty,” Vance said. “We do have people who are accused of attacking law enforcement officers. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely ignore some of the claims that they’re going to make.”
The possibility of Jan. 6 protesters benefiting from the fund has created hesitation for some Republicans.
“The bottom line is, I was here on January 6.T That was not a good day for our country,” South Dakota Sen Mike Rounds, a member of the appropriations committee, told NOTUS. “And most certainly I think those questions will come up. But right now it’s new, and we’ll just simply have to ask those questions as is appropriate for Congress to do.”
But other Republicans said they supported providing compensation to people who are wrongly targeted by the federal government.
“People who are harmed by government ought to be compensated by government,” said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
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