A top Republican senator blasted President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion vengeance fund as “stupid on stilts”—and called on his GOP Senate colleagues to publicly condemn it.
The Department of Justice this week announced a $1.776 billion fund that will make secret payments to Jan. 6 rioters and other Trump allies who say they were wrongly prosecuted by the Biden administration, without any legal or congressional oversight.
The fund has sparked fury on both sides of the aisle, with Republican senators refusing to vote on an immigration funding bill in protest, and “erupting” at acting attorney general Todd Blanche during a closed-door meeting on Thursday.
Some Republican senators, including Thom Tillis of North Carolina, are also publicly sharing their unfiltered thoughts on the taxpayer-funded plan.
“These people don’t deserve restitution,” he told reporters on Thursday. “Many of them deserve to be in prison. This is just stupid on stilts.”
Tillis, who serves on five Senate committees but announced last year that he wasn’t seeking re-election this fall, also said he had colleagues who shared his concerns—and that they “needed to speak up.”
“This is beyond the pale,” he added. “This is not good for my colleagues. There’s not one positive thing that could be spun out of this between now and November. This is bad policy. It’s bad timing, and it’s bad politics.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is also retiring this fall, had a similarly scathing assessment of the fund, which would be overseen by five commissioners handpicked by Blanche—who was previously Trump’s personal attorney—and could be removed by the president at will.
The recipients will remain anonymous, along with the amounts they receive, and Blanche has refused to rule out the possibility that Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump after being convicted of violent crimes could apply for payouts from the fund.
“So, the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong—Take your pick,” McConnell told reporters Thursday.
Republican Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have also spoken out against the fund.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump and the DOJ have tried to claim the fund was created as part of a “settlement agreement” in exchange for the president dropping a lawsuit against his own Internal Revenue Service over tax returns that were leaked by an independent contractor during his first term in office.
The judge in the case, however, had expressed doubts that the suit addressed a genuine case or controversy involving actual adversaries, since Trump himself oversees the IRS.
Rather than respond to the judge’s inquiries and face the very real prospect of the case being thrown out, Trump withdrew the suit without referencing or submitting a settlement to the court, Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in her order dismissing the case.
During Thursday’s closed-door meeting with Blanche, which lasted nearly two hours, up to 25 Republican senators spoke out against the fund.
Their reactions were “incredibly hostile,” multiple senators told Punchbowl’s Andrew Desiderio, as they demanded certain guardrails be put in place.
Thanks to the controversy, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota sent lawmakers home for the Memorial Day recess without voting on a reconciliation package that would allocate an additional $70 million to immigration enforcement through 2029.
The move reportedly infuriated Trump, who has demanded that Congress pass the reconciliation bill by June 1.
The funding bill was already facing some Republican opposition in the Senate after Trump’s allies attempted to include $1 billion in funding for the president’s White House ballroom.
Trump originally said the project would cost $100 million and be paid for entirely with private donations.
Now, the White House is demanding ten times that amount in public funds to build a six-story underground military bunker beneath the event space, would serve as a “shield” for the complex below, Trump told reporters this week.
