In social media postings Friday and Saturday, President Donald Trump renewed his push for the creation of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” which would provide payouts to his fascist followers—largely those prosecuted for the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
He made the threat in response to the refusal of two Republican senators to support his nominee for attorney general, Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer. The two senators, John Cornyn of Texas, who was defeated in the Republican primary, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring, wanted Blanche to put it in writing that the planned $1.8 billion fund had been abandoned. The White House barred Blanche from doing so.
Trump pulled back on the proposed fund after it came under attack by a significant section of congressional Republicans, including senators who had to flee for their lives from the mob which stormed the Senate chamber seeking to block a congressional vote to certify Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
The fund was to be established through a grossly illegal arrangement in which Trump would agree to settle a $10 billion suit which he filed against the Internal Revenue Service—which he now controls—over the leaking of his tax returns to the New York Times. In return, the Department of Justice—which he also controls—would establish the $1.8 billion fund to “compensate” alleged victims of Biden administration “weaponization” of the justice system.
In other words, the fund would provide payments to Trump supporters who committed crimes and were prosecuted under Biden, and then were pardoned by Trump on his first day after returning to the White House in January 2025. The vast majority of these were foot soldiers in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, since the Biden administration never sought to prosecute higher-level conspirators.
The Biden Justice Department appointed a special prosecutor who brought charges against Trump, but so belatedly that the case was abandoned after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.
The agreement between Trump as plaintiff and Trump as overlord of the Department of Justice was so obviously corrupt that the federal judge handling the lawsuit denounced it. The deal also included a provision exempting Trump, his family and his business operations from multiple federal investigations over improper tax filings.
Trump directly linked the renewal of his push for the fund to Blanche’s nomination. He said that he would keep Blanche as acting attorney general and resubmit his nomination after the election. He claimed Cornyn and Tillis were blocking the nomination in retaliation for him supporting challengers to their renomination.
“If Senators Cornyn and Tillis, both upset because I wouldn’t Endorse them (they lost, and quit, respectively!), aren’t going to approve Todd Blanche … to be the United States Attorney General, then I will keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard” to restore the fund.
Both Cornyn and Tillis have declared they would vote to confirm Blanche as attorney general if he would provide the written assurances against the establishment of the slush fund.
Tillis replied to Trump’s comments, saying that the president “clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against.”
Cornyn, defeated in the primary by the corrupt ultra-right Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, described Trump’s claim that he was seeking revenge as “a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” He added that Trump’s plan to resubmit the nomination after the election was a “gamble… After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Democrats are currently leading in the polls in both states.
Asked by one reporter whether his defeat in the primary was a factor in allowing him to publicly oppose Trump, Cornyn replied, “Well, I like to think that, you know, in matters of principle like this, my position would be the same. But obviously, it provides a measure of political freedom.”
The renewed conflict over the slush fund comes as another Trump effort to manipulate the criminal justice system collapsed. US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced Friday that she was dropping all charges against David Hearn, a 67-year-old former Olympic athlete who was arrested and charged with felony destruction of property for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Pirro, a Trump favorite on Fox News, conceded that there was no case against Hearn and that the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by incompetent renovation by the contractor, a former pool contractor for Trump properties outside Washington, who was awarded a no-bid contract despite having no experience in the type of work required.
In a transparent effort to avoid Trump’s wrath, Pirro blame the Interior Department and the Park Police for supplying bad information which led her to claim there was “tremendous evidence” against Hearn.
But Trump responded, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM … There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
While the prosecution might appear ludicrous and the case trivial, it was anything but that for David Hearn, who faced a potential 10-year prison sentence because Pirro had him indicted for felony rather than misdemeanor vandalism, due to the damage allegedly exceeded $1,000.