President Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to let go of his plans to use taxpayer money to reimburse people he says were mistreated by prior federal administrations, contradicting congressional testimony delivered a day earlier by the acting attorney general.
“The anti-weaponization fund. Have you dropped that?” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine asked Trump during an interview posted online Wednesday.
“No,” Trump replied, “A court ruled against it.”
“These are people that lost their lives over nonsense,” Trump said before, presumably describing what appeared to be people convicted or charged with rioting in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Trump’s election loss. “They were supposed to serve five years, 10 years, in jail. People committed suicide. … And these were many great people. I gave them pardons, and I’m very proud to have given them pardons.”
“I think,” Trump added, “they should be reimbursed for a crooked government.”
Trump did not elaborate on his plans or whether he would use the previously announced anti-weaponization fund or another mechanism to reimburse the people he mentioned.
A White House official, who would only speak on background, said both Trump and the acting attorney general were both acknowledging the court’s role in stopping the creation of the fund.
Trump’s remark came a day after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said three times at a congressional oversight hearing, “We are not moving forward with the fund.”
The Department of Justice announced plans to create the fund as part of a settlement the Internal Revenue Service reached to settle a $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed last year over an earlier unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns.
In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, the IRS and DOJ agreed to the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people it says were victimized by prior federal government actions. Blanche and Trump officials had declined to rule out giving taxpayer funds to people convicted of violently assaulting officers on Jan. 6, leading to bipartisan opposition to the fund in Congress.
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