White House officials are seriously considering abandoning President Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a controversial legal “settlement” Trump arranged with his own administration that critics have called a slush fund to pay out his allies who have faced legal troubles.
The fund was created after Trump dismissed his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for failing to keep his tax records safe from a whistleblower who illegally leaked the information to the public.
According to the Wall Street Journal, over a dozen GOP senators “privately urged top Trump aides to drop the fund since its creation last week, said people familiar with the outreach” — one of them being Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who not only is usually a close ally of the president but championed a controversial congressional provision to let himself sue over investigations into election interference.
“Administration officials have grown increasingly concerned about the viability of the fund, people familiar with the matter said, which had been expected to provide payouts to an array of Trump allies,” said the report. The president, for his part, “hasn’t agreed to drop the fund” as of now, but has acknowledged it has created significant political problems for the GOP.
This news comes after a federal judge in Virginia blocked the fund from taking effect, issuing a temporary stay to give time for a hearing to debate whether the fund is legal and was created through a valid process.
It also comes as other litigation advances against the fund, including a group of 35 retired judges who have urged the judge overseeing Trump’s dismissed case against the IRS to revive it so the settlement can be put under judicial scrutiny.
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