Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended what critics call President Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion “slush fund” that Capitol rioters may use for multi-million dollar taxpayer payouts.
Blanche will soon appoint a five-member panel to manage the “Anti-Weaponization” fund, a reserve that could compensate Trump’s allies who believe they were unfairly prosecuted.
One major concern about the fund, which was announced Monday, is that it can be used to reward rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and attacked police officers.
“Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time,” Blanche told CNN’s Paula Reid Wednesday.
“It’s abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer, which is why anytime anybody does that, and it’s a federal officer, we’ll prosecute them,” he added. “But that’s a completely different question with whether an individual is allowed to apply for a claim.”
When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he granted clemency to more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Capitol riot.
On that day in 2021, a pro-Trump mob violently made its way into the Capitol building in a failed attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.
While Blanche claimed Trump “does not stand for assaulting law enforcement,” he stopped short of affirming that a Capitol rioter wouldn’t be compensated with the fund.
“One of the factors the commissioners have to consider is what the claimant did — the claimant’s conduct,” Blanche reassured Reid. “The claimant would have to say, ‘I assaulted a cop and I want money.’”
“Whether the commissioners will give that person money – that claimant – it’s up to them,” he added.
Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges, both of whom were injured when they fought off the January 6 mob, filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to dissolve the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund.
“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” according to the complaint, the president is accused of creating a “taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.”
A Justice Department spokesperson told The Independent, “The only thing illegal and corrupt about this situation is the brazen weaponization of federal resources by previous administrations to retaliate against those with opposing political beliefs.”
The “anti-weaponization” fund was outlined in a settlement for a $10 billion lawsuit that Trump, his children and the luxury real estate company, the Trump Organization, filed against the IRS in January. The lawsuit centered around a leak of the president’s tax records to news outlets during his first term.
The fund will “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who, like Plaintiffs, state that they incurred harm from similar Lawfare and Weaponization,” according to the settlement agreement.
Blanche insisted during his CNN interview Wednesday that receiving money from the fund is not a “‘you’re going to get rich’ process.”
“There’s claims processes set up all the time when there’s large numbers of potential victims that are going to be compensated,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that all those victims get rich because there’s a claims process put up.”
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who lost his primary election last week after being targeted by Trump, criticized how government dollars are being used while Americans struggle with the rising cost of living.
“People are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not about putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the President and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability,” he wrote on X Wednesday night.
Blanche told CNN when asked about how average taxpayers would respond to the fund, “I do not think the American people have issues with that. To the contrary, I think they do want their tax dollars spent on things like that.”
