President Trump continued to send mixed messages Friday about the controversial “anti-weaponization” fund that was created as part of the settlement of his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS – a controversy that is holding up a vote to confirm his former personal attorney Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States.
Asked about the fund by reporters at a Cabinet meeting held at Camp David, Trump said he thinks the $1.776 billion fund is finished, however much he would prefer that it remain viable.
“It’s dead, but you know, I wish it weren’t,” Trump said, adding that he would like to see all the people prosecuted during the Biden administration over the January 6, 2021, mob attack on the Capitol receive compensation for what he characterized as terrible suffering.
“I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused,” Trump said. “I’d like to see them compensated for the pain. They lost their families. They committed suicide, many people committed suicide.”
Drama continues: Earlier in the day, Trump lashed out at Sen. John Cornyn, one of two Republican senators who are holding up the vote on Blanche as they seek reassurances that the fund has been permanently eliminated, and that a pledge from the IRS to provide Trump and his family with immunity from investigations has some limitations. Blanche has resisted putting any such reassurances in writing.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called ‘Fund,’ which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump said on his social media platform.
Trump’s continued defense of the idea of the fund prompted Republican political strategist Steven Duffield to say on social media, “This does not sound like citizen Trump has agreed to end the Fund. It makes sense that a majority of senators is concerned that he or his co-plaintiffs would sue to enforce the binding settlement agreement.”
Further complicating the picture, Trump on Friday appealed a judge’s ruling that he and his family could not cite their IRS immunity deal, effectively making it irrelevant.
Tillis pushes back: Although Cornyn made no comments, Sen. Thom Tillis, the other Republican holding up Blanche’s nomination, responded to Trump’s attack.
“The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it,” Tillis said on social media. “While I never disagreed that the Biden Administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation’s Capitol are not ‘great American patriots’ who are ‘victims of government abuse.’ Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government.”
Tillis said he has been working “in good faith” with Cornyn and Blanche to formally end the fund, but blamed “an incompetent personal advisor to the President” for refusing to amend the agreement.
The bottom line: The continued battle over the anti-weaponization fund and Trump’s IRS immunity deal makes it less likely that the Senate will vote to confirm Blanche as Attorney General before it leaves for summer break next week.