Trump Defends $1.8 Billion Fund, Attacks Cornyn as Blanche Nomination Stalls

Q: What specific criteria will determine eligibility for a billion-dollar taxpayer fund operating outside standard court supervision?

There are no settled, public eligibility criteria because the fund never advanced to an operating stage and the Justice Department later told courts it was “not going forward.” Court filings said no commissioners were appointed, no money was transferred, and no claims process was launched. Under the original DOJ plan, eligibility was intentionally broad. The fund was meant for people claiming they had suffered government “weaponization” or “lawfare,” not just in one case or one period. DOJ officials said there were “no partisan requirements” and, at one point, “no limitation on the claims.” A five-member panel appointed by the attorney general would have drafted the actual guidelines, received claims, and decided whether a claimant qualified for an apology, money, or both. That breadth is the core unresolved issue. Unlike a court-supervised class settlement with a defined plaintiff group, this proposal did not publicly set objective standards such as required proof, qualifying types of government action, excluded offenses, evidentiary thresholds, or damage formulas. Senators and outside critics specifically pressed for written limits, including whether violent offenders or Jan. 6 defendants could qualify, but no final written rules were issued. So the practical answer is that eligibility would have been determined by standards created later by an attorney-general-appointed commission, under a framework that remained broad and largely undefined before the fund was halted.

3 articles · Updated · CNN · Jul 31

$1.8 billion sits at the center of Todd Blanche’s stalled attorney general nomination, with Trump insisting Friday the acting AG “should be immediately approved.”
Trump defended the IRS-settlement “anti-weaponization fund” as compensation for people allegedly harmed under Biden, even though Blanche has said the program is dead and DOJ told courts it was abandoned.
John Cornyn is still withholding support, demanding written guarantees the fund cannot be revived and that a tax-immunity addendum applies only to past investigations involving Trump and others named in the settlement.
That leaves Blanche squeezed between Senate demands for enforceable limits and Trump, who again suggested Cornyn’s resistance is personal after backing Ken Paxton over the Texas senator.