United States President Donald Trump will reportedly drop his $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund amid congressional backlash, including from fellow Republicans.
On Monday, US media indicated the fund would be paused, though the White House has yet to publicly confirm the reports.
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Axios was the first to break the news, citing an unnamed senior official. “It’s dead for now,” the official told the news outlet.
The “anti-weaponisation” fund was announced last month as part of a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), part of his executive branch.
According to documents released by the Department of Justice, the $1.8bn was slated to serve as payment for victims of “lawfare” and government “weaponisation”.
Trump himself has repeatedly painted himself as such a victim, framing himself and his allies as targets of unfair government prosecution.
Monday’s announcement came after Trump met with House Speaker Mike Johnson over Republican concerns about the “anti-weaponisation” fund.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has likewise called for the fund to be dropped, as he seeks to rally Republicans to pass a $72bn immigration enforcement funding bill.
Still, Democrats on the Senate floor argued that the reported pause did not go far enough.
“The press reports that Trump says he will table his $2bn MAGA slush fund,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, using the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“But a promise from Trump is worthless. If Trump and Republicans are truly abandoning this corrupt scheme, they should have zero problem banning it in law.”
Schumer pledged to advance legislation to “ensure no president can ever do this again”.
Inside the controversy
Plans for the $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund were revealed on May 18, shortly after Trump agreed to drop his case against the IRS.
Trump had filed the lawsuit in January, alleging that the IRS was responsible for the leak of his tax returns, information from which was published in The New York Times and ProPublica, starting in 2020.
The Republican leader sought $10bn in damages, though critics argued that the lawsuit faced an uphill battle.
There were questions about whether it fell within the statute of limitations and whether the IRS could be held responsible for the actions of an outside contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who was convicted of leaking the documents.
The lawsuit and the subsequent settlement also raised outcry over apparent conflicts of interest, since Trump was in charge of the IRS and the Department of Justice, which represented the tax agency in court hearings.
After announcing the lawsuit’s settlement in May, the Department of Justice revealed its plans to set up the fund.
An additional settlement document also was made public, saying Trump and his family would have lifelong immunity from any IRS audits.
While the Department of Justice had yet to outline who would be eligible for the “anti-weaponisation” fund, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has declined to rule out Trump supporters involved in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Legal challenges
The “anti-weaponisation” fund has since been criticised as a piggy bank for payouts to Trump allies, and it has faced both legal and congressional pushback.
At least three separate lawsuits have been filed to stop the “anti-weaponisation” fund, including one filed by police officers injured in the January 6 attack.
Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the creation of the fund while the court reviewed the case.
The plaintiffs in that lawsuit were represented by the nonprofit Democracy Forward, and they included Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor involved in January 6 cases.
The third lawsuit was led by the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
All three legal complaints challenged the Trump administration’s legal authority to establish the fund, pointing to the president’s conflicts of interest.
Separately, the federal judge in Florida who was slated to hear Trump’s $10bn IRS complaint has reopened the case, citing details of the settlement that only became public after the case was dropped.
In response to reports that the “anti-weaponisation” fund had been paused, CREW issued a statement that it “never should’ve been proposed in the first place”.
“Trump’s reported temporary abandonment is not enough, and it does not resolve the legal issues raised in CREW’s case or others seeking to block the fund,” Nikhel Sus, CREW’s chief counsel, told Al Jazeera.
“We will continue pressing forward our case until the illegal fund is shuttered permanently.”
Al Jazeera reached out for comment to the White House, which responded by pointing to a post from the Department of Justice on social media, saying it would comply with the court ruling to pause the fund.
“This fund was open to anybody who was so weaponised, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise,” the Justice Department said in the post.
Congressional pressures
Even members of the Republican Party were sceptical of the “anti-weaponisation” fund and the settlement overall.
“It doesn’t look right,” Senator Don Bacon of Nebraska told KMTV in Omaha. “You can’t do it that way, when you’re negotiating with yourself for yourself.”
In an interview with CNN, another Republican, outgoing Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, called the fund “a payout pot for punks”.
Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana were also among the fund’s critics.
In a rare sign of Republican backlash, the Republican-led Senate last month delayed passing a $72bn funding bill for Trump’s immigration enforcement initiative, in part as a protest against the “anti-weaponisation” fund.
The $1.8bn used for the fund would have bypassed congressional approval, instead drawing from a pot of money used by the Justice Department to handle government settlements.
With reports emerging that the White House had agreed to suspend the “anti-weaponisation” fund, Senate Republicans signalled the $72bn in immigration funding would be put back on track.
But Democrats on the Senate floor on Monday continued to express outrage.
“The president wants to hand lofty payouts to his political buddies and the criminals who attacked our democracy at his request,” said Senator Dick Durbin. “It reeks of corruption.”
