The Trump administration's plans to scrap, for now, a controversial $1.8 billion legal fund for victims of alleged government "weaponization" ran into skepticism from Republican senators who demanded public assurances the fund is dead.
The apparent effort by the administration to suspend the fund comes amid blowback from Republicans and Democrats, who derided it as a slush fund for President Donald Trump's political allies. On Monday, several GOP senators signaled they want more information on the White House's plans for the fund before they agree to lift a blockade of a Trump-backed immigration enforcement bill.
"The only thing that's going to solve this problem to get immigration funded and law enforced is for the president to do away with the weaponization fund," House Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley told reporters. Grassley said there needs to be a public statement that the fund will be eliminated.
Louisiana Republican John Kennedy quipped that the immigration bill currently being held hostage looks like "a broken arm with the bone sticking out."
The bipartisan furor over the fund marks the latest setback for the president, who recently suffered a court defeat over his plans to overhaul the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has struggled to end the war in Iran.
A person who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the decision before it was announced, said the fund would be scrapped. They did not provide further details on the administration's plans, including whether it would affect a provision of the settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service that barred the agency from pursuing any probes into his tax returns. Another person familiar said the fund was paused.
Private assurances that the administration plans to do away with the fund have only been met with skepticism. Lawmakers and legal plaintiffs urged the administration to clarify as quickly as possible its plans after the Justice Department put out a statement that only addressed one part of a legal challenge to the fund.
Asked if the administration should make clear the fund won't be established, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said "that would be the ideal outcome."
"The best way forward is for the administration to shut it down themselves," he told reporters at the Capitol.
Thune also said the $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding would be easier to pass if money Trump is seeking to construct a White House ballroom was dropped from the package.
The fund faced multiple lawsuits, including from police officers who responded to the attack on the Capitol. A federal judge in Virginia last week
The Justice Department
One of the organizations that sued to challenge the fund, Democracy Forward, released a statement from its president, Skye Perryman, saying that while an end to the agreement "would be a major victory for people in America" they didn't intend to immediately drop their lawsuit.
"Until the administration fully abandons the scheme, it's beyond dispute that it will not recur, and our clients' harm is remedied, we will be in court challenging it," Perryman said.
IRS settlement
The Trump administration created the fund as part of a settlement resolving the president's lawsuit against the IRS over the 2019 leak of his tax information to the New York Times. The DOJ said it would be used to compensate those alleging that they were victims of politically motivated investigations or legal action, what Trump and allies have called government "weaponization."
Several Republican senators recently threatened to hold up an immigration enforcement package and balked at providing taxpayer funds for a White House ballroom Trump is seeking to build.
The fund was unprecedented in many respects; typically the DOJ defends federal agencies such as the IRS in court rather than cut deals with billions at stake without a proper legal fight.
The president's own stance on the settlement has shifted. Earlier he said any money from his lawsuit would go to charity, but the fund was instead poised to benefit political allies, including potentially some of those who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed effort to prevent the certification of the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
Legal headwinds
In addition to the political firestorm that erupted over the fund, Trump's administration was facing a multi-front legal fight.
In a May 29 order, the Alexandria, Virginia-based federal judge scheduled a hearing for June 12 for further arguments in the case after temporarily barring the Justice Department from working to set it up.
The order was not a final ruling on the lawfulness of the fund plan or even a preliminary ruling on whether the challengers were likely to succeed. The judge made clear that the order was meant to briefly maintain the status quo, writing at the time that she was entering it "to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed."
The Virginia case is one of at least four lawsuits filed challenging the fund.
