former secretary of state Hillary Clinton President Donald Trump’s new “anti-weaponization” fund has been criticized on the X website. She accused him of using taxpayer dollars to benefit political allies and supporters. January 6th Capitol riot.
“Trump not only pardoned his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He is now paying for them through a slush fund he created to reward allies — with your tax dollars. You can’t make this up,” Clinton wrote on X on Monday.
Clinton’s comments came after the Trump administration announced Monday it would set up a $1.7 billion fund to compensate aides to the Republican president who believe the Justice Department mistreated them during Joe Biden’s presidency.
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U.S. Department of Justice’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund”
The Justice Department announced the creation of an “anti-weaponization fund” as part of a deal to resolve a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump over the IRS’s disclosure of his tax returns.
The president filed the lawsuit in federal court in Florida earlier this year, and in a filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers revealed that the case had been dismissed. The lawsuit alleges that the advance disclosure of his and the Trump Organization’s private tax filings resulted in “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, mischaracterized them, and negatively impacted the public standing of President Trump and the other plaintiffs (his sons).”
On his first day in office, the president commuted or pardoned the sentences of supporters of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. His Justice Department has since begun investigating and prosecuting some of his alleged enemies and authorized payments to supporters involved in the Trump-Russia investigation.
In addition to being an unconventional answer, the fund signals the administration’s desire to reward allies who were investigated, charged and convicted before Trump was elected.
In a statement introducing the fund, Acting Attorney General Todd Branch described it as a “legitimate process for victims of legal and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
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Democrats protest the move
In addition to Clinton’s speech, other Democrats and government watchdogs immediately vowed to oppose the “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution. They fear it would unfairly use taxpayer funds to enrich those close to the president and provide an opportunity for baseless accusations of a witch hunt.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, “This case is nothing more than a scam designed to divert $1.7 billion in taxpayer money from the Treasury Department and funnel it into Trump’s vast slush fund at the Justice Department before distributing it to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophants of his plan to steal the election.”
