Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has vowed to make sure that Donald Trump’s latest pet project—the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—doesn’t get a “dime” from Congress.
The Republican appeared on State of the Union Sunday alongside Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi and offered a blunt reminder of the limits on Trump’s ambitions.
“Every branch has an independent constitutional check on the other. Congress are the appropriators. The executive branch of government does not have any money in their own right,” he said.
The former FBI special agent then stated: “Every dime that every agency in the executive branch has comes from Congress. So that is our determination. The votes are not there and will not be there to give a dime to this fund.”
Fitzpatrick added that Trump was using legal “loopholes” in order to push his agenda, but that he and Suozzi were a step ahead.
He told host Dana Bash: “Tom and I have worked together on multiple pieces of legislation that we are prepared to move to the floor to make sure that, number one, that this fund specifically is killed.
“But more importantly, Dana, is getting back to the 1956 law that allowed this abuse of discretion to happen in the first place,” he said. “There’s a ton of loopholes that we’ve got to fix.”
Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” could have seen convicted Jan 6. rioters get payouts as purported “victims” of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.
The $1.776 billion slush fund idea was immediately unpopular with many Republicans—except those who were already planning to apply for their own reimbursement—and was shot down this week.
The DOJ announced on Monday that plans for the fund would be abandoned after it was temporarily blocked by the courts, sharing in a statement that it “disagrees strongly” with the court ruling.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was equally firm on Tuesday, telling lawmakers that the administration would “not moving forward with the fund, period.”
However, despite the DOJ’s response, it seems that the president may not have given up on his slush fund dreams just yet.
Telling NBC on in a pre-recorded interview Sunday that he still “loves” the fund plan, Trump added: “Well, look. If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.
“People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them.”
