President Donald Trump’s team has reportedly planned under-the-table tactics to effectively still go through with the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to pay off his allies who have been charged with crimes. But this is taking a huge risk, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman told MS NOW’s Erielle Reshef on Thursday.
The scheme, considered a slush fund by critics, drew bipartisan backlash, but ultimately Senate Republicans decided not to take legislative action against it after the Justice Department said it wouldn’t go through with the plan. The new reporting could change the calculus, Sherman argued.
“Jake, did lawmakers think that they had put this all behind them?” asked Reshef. “What’s the reaction on Capitol Hill, that this could come back to life?”
Republicans, replied Sherman, “had [acting Attorney General Todd] Blanche in committee saying it wasn’t going to happen. They had assurances from the White House that wasn’t going to happen. And and they voted down several amendments to make sure it didn’t happen.” Clearly, he continued, they thought all this had been a settled issue.
If “the administration does this in any way, shape or form,” Sherman continued, it would constitute “a huge middle finger to Capitol Hill … And there will be, I would imagine there will be legislative repercussions.”
“Legislatively, what moves can Congress take to kill this?” Reshef pressed him. “Do they have options at this point?”
Sherman confirmed “they have lots of options.” In addition to passing a law that would outright ban it, “they could also use the appropriations process to explicitly prohibit any money from going to this. There are ways.”
Republicans chose not to use those powers because they thought Trump had backed down, he added, but “they have other opportunities to do that should they want to in the next, you know, 6 to 8 months.”
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