{"id":22975,"date":"2026-05-19T19:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-1-8-billion-lawfare-fund-is-making-republicans-nervous\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:47:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:47:06","slug":"trumps-1-8-billion-lawfare-fund-is-making-republicans-nervous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-1-8-billion-lawfare-fund-is-making-republicans-nervous\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s $1.8 billion \u2018lawfare\u2019 fund is making Republicans nervous"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Republicans are greeting the Justice Department\u2019s announcement of a new \u201cAnti-Weaponization Fund\u201d with concern, confusion and questions \u2014 and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is offering up little clarity on how it will work.<\/p>\n

At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, Blanche fielded queries from members of both parties about the logistics of the $1.8 billion account, who would have oversight and whether it could function as a \u201cslush fund\u201d for individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n

Democrats are, predictably, enraged by the terms of the settlement for President Donald Trump\u2019s $10 billion lawsuit against the government for the leak of his tax information, which resulted in the creation of this account to benefit targets of \u201cweaponization and lawfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no level below which these folks will not go,\u201d Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) said in an interview. \u201cIt is just disgusting, having come off Law Enforcement Week, to have set up a slush fund to pay off people who attack police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Republicans are also signaling deep discomfort with the arrangement, as well as frustration that they weren\u2019t given the answers they were looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for, and \u2026 I didn’t hear anything that gave me certainty in terms of how this all comes together,\u201d said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), after attending the hearing with Blanche. \u201cCan the president just say $1.87 billion? \u2026 I don’t know enough about it to feel comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas \u2014 the top Republicans on the full Appropriations committee and the panel that oversees DOJ funding, respectively \u2014 both pressed Blanche at the hearing to explain how payouts from the fund would be managed and who might receive them.<\/p>\n

Blanche said repeatedly it would be up to the \u201ccommissioners\u201d to determine who would get financial compensation for being victimized by the government. He repeatedly said anyone \u2014 even President Joe Biden\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, who was prosecuted and convicted on gun and tax charges before being pardoned by his father \u2014 could apply for compensation.<\/p>\n

But he also wouldn\u2019t rule out that Jan. 6 rioters convicted of assaulting police might qualify, a deeply sensitive issue for lawmakers who were at the Capitol that day.<\/p>\n

Vice President JD Vance, at a news conference later Tuesday afternoon, further confused the matter by saying \u201cwe\u2019re not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer\u201d but also that \u201cwe do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019re going to evaluate these things on a case-by-case basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he was \u201cnot a big fan\u201d of the fund and that he didn\u2019t \u201csee a purpose for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there are, and will be continue to be, a lot of questions around that, that the administration is going to have to answer,\u201d he said later at a news conference.<\/p>\n

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the White House\u2019s staunchest allies who once championed a payout for lawmakers who had their phone data subpoenaed by the Biden administration, said Tuesday he believed senators needed more information.<\/p>\n

\u201cConceptually I understand what he’s trying to do, but I don’t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we need to ask more questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not yet clear how Republicans will reconcile their desire for answers with their waning appetite for going against Trump, who has yet again placed the GOP in an awkward situation: Endorse a policy that Democrats are casting as a self-enrichment scheme or get crosswise with the president, who is successfully going after his political enemies in midterm primary campaigns.<\/p>\n

Appropriators could choose to put some guardrails on the massive settlement account by restricting funding from going towards its implementation or clearly defining who could benefit from it. Murkowski, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said she would have \u201cserious and significant problems\u201d if the money was given to those convicted for their part in the Capitol attack.<\/p>\n

But Moran concluded his probing questions of Blanche by saying the Appropriations Committee did not have jurisdiction \u201cin a sense, because this is mandatory spending\u201d \u2014 a sign he may not seek to be proactive in placing limits on how the fund might function.<\/p>\n

In a further apparent effort to deflect the issue, Moran asked Blanche during the hearing whether he had spoken to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the account. Blanche replied that he had not \u201cover the past 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters that the situation was akin to the $2 million settlement the DOJ reached with former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page<\/u><\/a>, who sued the government after the Trump administration released their text messages in apparent violation of the federal Privacy Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has happened before in a Democrat administration, so I’m not sure you should be surprised that there’s justice for people that have had the government weaponized against them,\u201d Grassley said.<\/p>\n

Still, he added, \u201cif there’s questions\u201d about the new account, \u201cwe’re going to be able to discuss it directly when we have the attorney general before our committee for our usual oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel has not yet scheduled such a hearing with Blanche.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Republicans are greeting the Justice Department\u2019s announcement of a new \u201cAnti-Weaponization Fund\u201d with concern, confusion and questions \u2014 and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is offering up little clarity on how it will work. At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning, Blanche fielded queries from members of both parties about the logistics of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}