Trump suspends $1.8 billion ‘anti-arms’ fund amid bipartisan backlash | Political news

US President Donald Trump has reportedly abandoned his $1.8 billion “anti-arms” fund due to backlash from Congress, particularly from his fellow Republicans.

On Monday, US media reported that the fund would be suspended, although the White House has not yet publicly confirmed this information.

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Axios was the first to report the news, citing an unnamed senior official. “It’s dead for now,” the official told the outlet.

The “anti-arms” fund was announced last month as part of an agreement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is part of his executive branch.

According to documents released by the Justice Department, the $1.8 billion was to pay victims of the government’s “legal warfare” and “militarization.”

Trump himself has repeatedly portrayed himself as such a victim, portraying himself and his allies as the target of unjust government prosecutions.

Monday’s announcement comes after Trump met with House Speaker Mike Johnson about Republican concerns about the “anti-arms” fund.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has also called for the fund to be abandoned, as he seeks to rally Republicans to pass a $72 billion immigration enforcement funding bill.

Still, Senate Democrats argued that the announced pause did not go far enough.

“The press is reporting that Trump is saying he’s going to deposit his $2 billion 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 the Republicans truly abandon this corrupt system, they should have no problem banning it into law.”

Schumer pledged to advance legislation to “ensure that no president can ever do this again.”

At the heart of the controversy

Plans for a $1.8 billion “anti-arms” fund were revealed on May 18, shortly after Trump agreed to drop his lawsuit against the IRS.

Trump had filed a lawsuit in January, alleging that the IRS was responsible for leaking his tax returns, information about which was published in the New York Times and ProPublica beginning in 2020.

The Republican leader sought $10 billion in damages, although critics said the lawsuit was an uphill battle.

Questions were raised about whether the statute of limitations was met and whether the IRS could be held liable for the actions of an outside contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who was convicted of leaking the documents.

The lawsuit and subsequent settlement also raised an outcry over apparent conflicts of interest, since Trump was in charge of the IRS and the Justice Department, which represented the tax agency in court hearings.

After announcing the lawsuit settlement in May, the Justice Department revealed plans to create the fund.

An additional settlement document was also made public, claiming that Trump and his family would receive lifetime immunity from any IRS audit.

While the Justice Department has not yet clarified who would be eligible for the “anti-arms” fund, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has refused to exclude Trump supporters involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Legal challenges

The “anti-arms” fund has since been criticized as a piggy bank for payments to Trump allies, and it has faced both legal and congressional resistance.

At least three separate lawsuits have been filed to block the “anti-arms” fund, including one filed by police officers injured in the Jan. 6 attack.

Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the creation of the fund while the court reviews the case.

The plaintiffs in that lawsuit were represented by the nonprofit Democracy Forward, and among them was Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor involved in the January 6 cases.

The third trial was conducted by the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The three legal complaints challenged the Trump administration’s legal authority to create the fund, highlighting the president’s conflicts of interest.

Separately, the federal judge in Florida who was scheduled to hear Trump’s $10 billion IRS complaint reopened the case, citing details of the settlement that were only made public after the case was dropped.

In response to reports that the “anti-arms” fund had been suspended, CREW issued a statement saying it “should never have been proposed in the first place.”

“The temporary abandonment reported by Trump is not enough and it does not resolve the legal issues raised in the case of CREW or others seeking to block the fund,” Nikhel Sus, CREW’s chief lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

“We will continue to press our case until the illegal fund is permanently closed. »

Al Jazeera sought comment from the White House, which responded by citing a Justice Department social media post saying it would comply with the court’s decision to suspend the fund.

“This fund was open to anyone who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether Democrat, Republican, conservative, independent, or otherwise,” the Justice Department said in its message.

Congressional pressures

Even members of the Republican Party were skeptical of the “anti-arms” fund and the settlement as a whole.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Sen. Don Bacon of Nebraska told KMTV in Omaha. “You can’t do it that way, when you’re negotiating with yourself.”

In an interview with CNN, another Republican, outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, called the fund “a pot of money 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 passage of a $72 billion funding bill for Trump’s immigration control initiative, in part to protest the “anti-arms” fund.

The $1.8 billion used for the fund would have bypassed congressional approval and drawn from a pool of money used by the Justice Department to manage government regulations.

With reports emerging that the White House had agreed to suspend the “anti-arms” fund, Senate Republicans signaled that the $72 billion in immigration funding would be put back on track.

But Democrats present in the Senate continued to express their indignation on Monday.

“The president wants to pay large sums of money to his political friends and criminals who attacked our democracy at his behest,” said Senator Dick Durbin. “It stinks of corruption.”

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