Trump ends $10B IRS lawsuit for $1.7B ally fund

On Monday, the Trump administration announced the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were unfairly treated by the Biden administration’s Justice Department.

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was announced by the Justice Department as part of a deal to resolve President Donald Trump's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, News.Az reports, citing France24.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in announcing the fund in a statement that it was “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress”.

Democrats and government watchdogs immediately pledged to fight what they called a “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution, warning that the arrangement would unjustly enrich people close to the president with taxpayer dollars and open the door to meritless claims of political persecution.

Trump's lawyers disclosed the dismissal of the case in a filing Monday in federal court in Florida, where the president sued earlier this year. 

The fund would represent not only a highly unorthodox resolution but also a further demonstration of the administration's eagerness to reward allies who before Trump came to power were investigated and in some cases charged and convicted.

Most notably, the president on his first day back in office pardoned or commuted the sentences of supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to halt the certification of election results. His Justice Department since then has approved payouts to supporters entangled in the Trump-Russia investigation and investigated and prosecuted some of his perceived adversaries.

“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes,” Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.

Trump’s attorneys suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the case that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge. But a group of 93 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a challenge.

It was not immediately clear who precisely will stand to benefit from the fund. But its creation reflects Trump’s long-running claims that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was weaponized against him.

He has cited as proof the since-dismissed criminal charges he faced between his first and second terms of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost, and of retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli