The president continues to advocate using taxpayer funds to reward Capitol rioters, a stance that clashes with the attorney general-nominee’s assurance that such payouts won’t occur.
Last month, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that the Justice Department would not move forward with the $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, the mechanism described in President Donald Trump’s May 18 settlement with the IRS. “Period,” Blanche added.
Sens. John Cornyn (R–Texas) and Thom Tillis (R–N.C.), whose objections to that settlement have held up the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote on Blanche’s nomination, want a written guarantee from him, which he has thus far refused to provide. On Friday, Trump himself underscored the push for that pledge by saying his supporters “should be given compensation for what has been done to them.”
The Anti-Weaponization Fund lay at the center of the original IRS settlement, despite having nothing to do with Trump’s lawsuit against the agency over damages from an IRS contractor’s illegal disclosure of his tax returns. The fund was intended to recompense Trump’s allies and followers by offering compensation to individuals who claim they were subjected to politically motivated abuses of power during the Biden administration.
That proposal drew a bipartisan backlash so intense that Blanche, who had approved the fund and repeatedly defended it, stepped away from the plan just two weeks after unveiling it. Republican senators, including Cornyn and Tillis, were particularly troubled by the prospect that beneficiaries could include Trump supporters who assaulted police during the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. After all, Trump had already pardoned roughly 1,600 rioters, including people convicted of violent crimes, and he had repeatedly characterized them as victims of government persecution.
Even after Blanche announced the fund’s demise, Trump revived the idea and reinforced the impression that Capitol rioters deserved taxpayer-funded awards. He did not rule out awards for individuals convicted of assaulting police officers, suggesting they may have pled guilty under pressure even if they were innocent.
Trump was at it again on Friday morning. The Anti-Weaponization Fund “will not benefit me,” he wrote on Truth Social, “but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration….Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them….I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure.”
Trump “made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it,” Tillis responded on X. “While I never disagreed that the Biden Administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation’s Capitol are not ‘great American patriots’ who are ‘victims of government abuse.’ Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government.”
The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund remains alive, which is precisely why we are working to end it. While I don’t dispute that the Biden Administration pursued some vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the individuals who assaulted police and desecrated our Capitol are not… https://t.co/Ebe2nsePnl
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) July 31, 2026
Tillis reiterated the same basic objection after the fund’s announcement. He argued that the prospect of potentially compensating someone who assaulted a police officer is “absurd.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) likewise described a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops” as “utterly stupid” and “morally wrong.”
The Anti-Weaponization Fund “is not popular,” Tillis noted on Thursday. “The president’s not winning on this issue. It is hurting some of our candidates because they can’t explain it. And now it looks like they weren’t being honest when they said it was inoperative.”
In a post on X, Tillis said he and Cornyn “have been working with Acting AG Todd Blanche to end the Anti Weaponization Fund, and he has been forthright, thoughtful and patient.” He added that he would “continue working in good faith to put an end this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars.”
Tillis attributed the difficulty in obtaining a written promise that the fund is dead for good to the influence of “an incompetent personal advisor to the President” who “refuses to amend the bogus settlement.” He presumably was referring to Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn, who played a key role in “the bogus settlement.”
The senator’s description of the arrangement, which Trump has called “a settlement with myself,” is accurate. Two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee began considering Blanche’s nomination, the federal judge who oversaw Trump’s case concluded that it was a sham from the start, since he controlled both sides in the supposed dispute.
The case pitted Trump against an agency he oversees, represented by Justice Department lawyers who also answer to him and who never bothered to contest his claims. The plaintiffs and the defendants “worked in tandem and were never actually adverse,” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote, saying the lawsuit was nothing more than a pretext for “a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”
In addition to the supposedly defunct Anti-Weaponization Fund, that “settlement” included an order in which Blanche purported to shield Trump and his family from liability for tax violations and any other federal offenses they may have committed. That part of the agreement likewise had nothing to do with Trump’s complaint against the IRS, which in any case was legally doomed from the outset because he missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. But unlike the fund, Blanche says, that promise of protection, which could save Trump more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties, remains in place, although Cornyn and Tillis want Blanche to clarify its scope.
Given all that, it is puzzling that Cornyn and Tillis seem content to haggle over the details of the massive favors Blanche secured for his boss, rather than questioning how someone fit to run the Justice Department could have signed off on such a brazenly corrupt product of self-dealing. That act alone is enough to disqualify Blanche from the job, since it signals he is so eager to appease Trump that he is willing to abandon legal ethics, shirk his official duties, and trivialize the civil justice system while presenting it as standard operating procedure at the Justice Department.
