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Hillary Clinton targets Trump over ‘anti-weaponization’ fund, Jan. 6 pardons and IRS settlement
Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for creating an 'anti-weaponization' fund, accusing him of misusing taxpayer money to benefit January 6 Capitol rioters.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken to X to criticize President Donald Trump over the newly created “anti-weaponization” fund. She accused him of using taxpayer money to benefit political allies and supporters tied to the January 6 Capitol riot.
"Trump didn’t just pardon his followers who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He’s now set them up for payments through a slush fund he created to reward his allies—out of your tax dollars. You could not make this up,” Clinton wrote on X on Monday.
Clinton's comments came after the Trump administration announced on Monday that a $1.7 billion fund would be established to reimburse the Republican president's associates who feel the Justice Department mistreated them under Joe Biden's presidency.
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DOJ's “Anti-Weaponization Fund”
As part of an agreement to settle President Donald Trump's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service about the disclosure of his tax returns, the Justice Department announced the "Anti-Weaponization Fund."
In a filing on Monday in federal court in Florida, where the president filed a lawsuit earlier this year, Trump's attorneys revealed the case's dismissal. The lawsuit claimed that a prior disclosure of his and the Trump Organization's private tax documents led to “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump and the other Plaintiffs’ (his sons) public standing.”
On his first day back in office, the president commuted or pardoned the sentences of supporters who had rioted at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since then, his Justice Department has looked into and prosecuted some of his alleged enemies and authorized payments to supporters involved in the Trump-Russia probe.
In addition to being a very unconventional answer, the fund would be another indication of the administration's desire to reward allies who, before Trump's election, were investigated, charged, and convicted.
In a statement introducing the fund, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described it as "a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress."
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Democrats protest the move
Alongside Clinton's remarks, other democrats and government watchdogs immediately vowed to oppose the "corrupt" and unprecedented resolution. They raised concerns that it would unfairly use taxpayer funds to enrich those close to the president and provide opportunities for baseless accusations of political persecution.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, “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.”
