The Trump Administration’s $1.8 billion plan to pay off people who claim to be victims of Biden Administration harassment is, as of today, somewhere between dead and still alive but on life support. Statements to Congress this week by a top Justice Department official refusing to put in writing the fund’s supposed closure have not convinced critics.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a House of Representatives’ committee hearing Tuesday, “We are not moving forward with the plan. Period.” Asked if that meant “not ever,” he replied: “Correct.” But when he was then asked to commit to that in writing, he refused.
Meanwhile, Common Cause – a liberal advocacy group that is among a variety of challengers who have sued to block the plan – insisted in a statement that “we won’t stop our litigating until the Department of Justice formalizes this decision explicitly in writing.”
No new documents were filed Wednesday in Alexandria, VA, and Miami, FL, where two federal judges, acting independently, are pondering what to do with the challenges to the fund. Both judges are awaiting written replies from Trump lawyers and Administration lawyers. The responses are due June 12.
On Capitol Hill, the Senate’s Democratic leadership vowed on Wednesday to put to a vote later this week a proposed permanent ban on the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The plan was given that name by government officials as a way to compensate, financially, individuals who were prosecuted or legally investigated by officials who worked for President Biden.
That Senate maneuver, though, appears to be broader than closing down the scheme to make payments of U.S. Treasury money. Democrats also plan to force a vote on blocking a separate part of the Trump plan that involved a formal promise by Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche that President Trump, his two sons and their main family business will be given a permanent form of immunity to any claims – including demands for unpaid federal taxes – that might be pursued against them by the government in the future. That promise apparently still stands, according to replies that Blanche gave to questions by committee members Tuesday.
Critics have argued that Justice Department officials have no authority, on their own, to grant such immunity. It has apparently never been promised before. It is not clear what the grant of immunity has to do with the Treasury payout fund, but it was made public by Blanche when he disclosed all of the Trump scheme last week. That plan was put forth as a settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit that Trump had filed in January against the Internal Revenue Service in a dispute over public disclosure of some of his past tax records showing millions in unpaid tax obligations.
The judges in Virginia and Florida are considering whether the settlement was legal, and the judge in Florida is considering separately whether Trump’s lawsuit was not a genuine legal dispute but was merely a deceptive basis for settling the IRS case in order to set the stage for creating the Treasury payment plan. If the judge were to find that lawyers for the Trumps and for the Administration had engaged in a “fraud on the court,” the lawyers could be penalized under federal court filing rules.
