President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over leaked tax returns and walked away with something better — a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, and yes, the number is exactly what you think it is. The same government that tried to destroy the man now has to cut a check with the birth year of America stamped on it.
You can't make this up. You literally cannot.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the fund as part of the settlement, saying it exists "for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress." The money comes from the Judgment Fund — a pot Congress continuously appropriates to pay legal claims against the government — and will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the AG. The commission has the power to issue both monetary awards and formal apologies to anyone who can show the feds wrongly targeted them under the Biden administration.
So Trump turned four years of political persecution into a billion-dollar patriotic reparations program. On brand doesn't even begin to cover it.
But here's where it gets fun. Senate Republicans are losing their minds over this — and not at the Democrats. At their own team.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas described a closed-door meeting with Blanche as "one of the roughest meetings I've seen in my entire time in the Senate." About 45 senators showed up, and according to Cruz, at least half of them were blasting the attorney general. "Fiery" didn't begin to cut it.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the whole thing a "payout pot for punks" and threatened to vote against the party's reconciliation bill if it included the fund. He dismissed last-minute changes to the broader immigration package as "gimmicks that are coming in at the 11th hour." Meanwhile, retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell — never one to miss a chance to be unhelpful — called the fund "utterly stupid" and "morally wrong."
Mitch McConnell calling something Trump did "morally wrong." Somewhere, irony just died and nobody sent flowers.
The fallout has already torpedoed the Senate's timeline. Republicans left for recess without passing Trump's immigration enforcement package, blowing past the president's June 1 deadline. The $1.776 billion controversy effectively sank the reconciliation bill — at least for now.
Look, there's a legitimate debate about whether taxpayer money should fund a commission that could pay out to Trump allies who claim they were targeted. That's fair. But let's not pretend the outrage from McConnell and friends is principled concern about the Judgment Fund. These are the same senators who couldn't muster a fraction of this energy when the Biden DOJ was actually weaponizing the justice system against a sitting president's political opponents.
They were quiet when Trump got raided at Mar-a-Lago. They were quiet when his tax returns got leaked. They were quiet when Jack Smith's office was running a parallel prosecution operation. But a fund to compensate the victims of all that? Now they're "screaming."
Trump dropped a $10 billion lawsuit, picked up a $1.776 billion fund named after the year we told a king to get lost, and made half the Senate melt down in the process. If you think that wasn't the plan all along, you haven't been paying attention. As reported by the New York Post, this fight is far from over — and the number on that check isn't changing.
