Trump DOJ Creates $1.8 Billion Compensation Fund for Trump Allies

Acting AG Todd Blanche (Reuters)
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Good Monday evening. The Iran war started 80 days ago - and the Iran war ceasefire went into effect 41 days ago, meaning that it has now been in place for longer than the initial fighting phase of the conflict. President Trump warned in a social media post yesterday that "the clock is ticking" for Iran. He then announced today that, at the request of Middle East allies, he had called off a strike on Iran planned for Tuesday because "serious negotiations are now taking place."

Here's what else we're watching while waiting to see if Republicans can ram through their budget reconciliation bill this week.

Trump DOJ Announces $1.8 Billion Compensation Fund for Trump Allies

The Trump administration announced Monday that it is establishing a highly unusual $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund to compensate people who claim they were improperly targeted under the Biden administration. The move drew swift condemnation from Democrats and good government groups, who warned that it would essentially serve as a taxpayer-funded slush fund that the president could use to direct money to his allies, including people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

"This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history," said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan government watchdog. Sherman added that it is "the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency."

The new fund, announced by the Justice Department, is part of a settlement agreement in President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The president, his sons and the Trump Organization agreed to drop the lawsuit and two other claims against the government, one related to an investigation into his 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia and the other stemming from the search of his Mar-a-Lago home in a classified documents case. In exchange, the plaintiffs receive an apology and the creation of the compensation fund. They do not get any payment or other damages from the settlement.

"The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again," said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who formerly served as Trump's personal lawyer. "As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress."

Blanche's memo did not mention the numerous cases in which the Trump Justice Department has investigated or prosecuted the president's political foes, sometimes under Trump's explicit direction to do so - cases that have invited criticism that the DOJ is engaging in precisely that same "weaponization" that it claims to be correcting.

"The use of government power to target individuals or entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, or ideological reasons should not be tolerated by any Administration*,"* Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said in a statement.

Evading judicial oversight: By dropping the lawsuit against the IRS, Trump and the other plaintiffs may remove the case and the settlement from the oversight of a federal district court judge in Florida, who reportedly had been considering dismissing the suit because Trump controls the legal teams on both sides.

Nearly 100 House Democrats signed onto a brief filed with the court that seeks to block the settlement and have the lawsuit thrown out.

"This is pure fraud and highway robbery. No one can be both plaintiff and defendant in the same case," Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes."

A news release and a two-page memo issued by the attorney general's office provided relatively few specifics about how the new fund will operate or how the department will define "weaponization," though the Justice Department did say that there are "no partisan requirements to file a claim."

Blanche's memo said that the size of the fund, with the type of symbolism that Trump has embraced before, "does not represent the value of any claim by plaintiffs, but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants' claims."

The nearly $1.8 billion in the fund will come from a Treasury Department judgment fund created by Congress to pay court judgments and settlements of lawsuits against the government. The money will be controlled by a five-member panel appointed by the attorney general, with one member chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. Trump can remove any member if he chooses, though the replacement would be chosen through the same process.

The Justice Department said that the new fund is required to submit a quarterly report to the attorney general "outlining who has received relief and what form of relief was awarded." The fund must stop processing claims by December 1, 2028, and any money left over will go back to the U.S. government.

What's next: Blanche is sure to be grilled about the new fund when he testifies before a Senate subcommittee at a hearing Tuesday on the president's fiscal year 2027 budget request for the Justice Department.

Trump Ballroom Security Money Nixed by Senate Parliamentarian

The Senate parliamentarian ruled late Saturday that $1 billion in funding for President Trump's ballroom included in the Republican reconciliation bill violates the requirements to be passed by a simple majority vote.

Republicans are trying to use the $72 billion reconciliation bill that aims to fund immigration enforcement agencies through 2029 as a vehicle to pay for security-related elements of the White House ballroom currently under construction, amid legal challenges. But Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that the ballroom funding falls outside the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee, which wrote that portion of the reconciliation bill.

If Republicans were to keep the provision in the bill as currently formulated, it would be subject to a 60-vote threshold for passage rather than the 50-vote threshold allowed under reconciliation.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, welcomed the parliamentarian's ruling. "The American people shouldn't spend a single dime on Trump's gold-plated ballroom boondoggle," he said in a statement. "While we expect Republicans to change this bill to appease Trump, Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill."

Republicans say they will rework the request and send it back to the parliamentarian for review. "Redraft. Refine. Resubmit," Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said on X. "None of this is abnormal during a Byrd process," he added, referring to the Byrd Rule that governs reconciliation bills, named after former Sen. Robert Byrd.

What comes next: The parliamentarian is expected to rule on the revised language this week as Republicans push to pass the reconciliation bill by Friday. If the ballroom funding remains in the bill, Democrats say they will bring up amendments during the "vote-a-rama" session that would divert the money to other uses, forcing Republicans to take a public stance on the issue. Not every Republican senator is happy with the funding, which comes at a time when Americans are facing gas prices near $5 a gallon.

$580 Billion Highway Bill Includes New Fee for Electric Cars

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released the text of a bill that would provide $580 billion over five years to fund improvements for highway and rail infrastructure around the country.

The surface transportation reauthorization bill is the primary vehicle for funding the nation's transportation systems, and lawmakers hope to pass the latest five-year plan before the fiscal year ends on September 30.

The latest iteration - called the Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development for America's 250th Act, or BUILD America 250 Act - includes a new funding stream for the beleaguered Highway Trust Fund. Owners of electric vehicles, who don't pay the gasoline and diesel taxes used by the fund to build and repair roads, would pay annual fees of $130 starting in 2029. Plug-in hybrid owners would pay $35 per year.

The bill also includes $50 billion for bridges. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves said it's the largest such funding in history.

"I believe the BUILD America 250 Act is the most important surface transportation bill since President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System," Graves said. "I'm extremely proud of the historic level of investment in America's bridges ... And the BUILD America 250 Act ensures that electric vehicle owners begin paying their fair share for the use of our roads."

Rep. Rick Larsen, the senior Democrat on the committee, said the bill was a good example of what bipartisan cooperation can do. "You can't have a big-league economy with little-league infrastructure," Larsen said.

The committee reportedly hopes to take up the bill for consideration by Thursday, before House lawmakers leave town for the week-long Memorial Day break.

Number of the Day: $42 Billion

Americans have spent about $42 billion extra on fuel since the start of the war with Iran as of Monday evening, according to a cost tracker hosted by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

That translates to about $321 per household going toward higher gasoline and diesel fuel prices.

Jeff Colgan, a political scientist at Brown, said the data "shows that energy price shocks function as an economy-wide, unacknowledged tax on households, with costs comparable to large federal programs and policies." Colgan noted that money being used to pay higher energy fuel costs could be used to completely rebuild that nation's air traffic control system (at a cost of $31.5 billion) or repair and modernize more than 10,000 bridges ($40 billion).

"We could have been building the transportation infrastructure of the future if we weren't wasting it on higher fuel costs associated with a war that Americans mostly don't want," Colgan told the Financial Times.

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