Bipartisan group of ex-federal judges challenges Trump’s $1.8bn ‘anti-weaponization’ fund | US news
Dozens of former federal judges have joined the push to block Donald Trump from creating a $1.776 billion “anti-proliferation fund” that would funnel taxpayer dollars to the president’s political allies.
Bipartisan group of 35 judges files suit a case On Wednesday in the southern district of Florida, we are trying to reopen Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of tax information by a whistleblower who later filed the tip. prisoner He was sentenced to up to five years in prison.
Trump, who demanded $10 billion in compensation, settled the case for compensation earlier this month. financial agreement The IRS allowed him to set up what critics call a “slush fund” for his allies. This could include those convicted of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, which he incited while trying to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump pardoned the convicts after returning to the White House last year.
The former justices said the settlement fund “was the product of collusion and itself a fraud on the Court” and urged Kathleen Williams, a Miami-based federal judge appointed by Barack Obama, to reconsider her decision to approve it on May 18.
The reopening of the case “allows the Court to initiate an investigation into whether the Court has been deceived, including the existence of an underlying lawsuit or dispute and the purported arm’s length negotiations conducted towards resolution,” the lawsuit said.
Democrats and other critics believe Williams tore up the deal days before Trump was due to rule on whether the IRS lawsuit had merit. The justices argue that he may have been deceived by the settlement, which has not yet been made public, and that he may have the authority to reopen the case because it is the product of fraud.
“The parties here dismissed this case before the Court could complete its investigation into whether there was a bona fide lawsuit or dispute, and then cited its ‘settlement’ in this case as legal justification for plundering $1.776 billion in federal treasury,” the filing said.
The lawyers behind the case include conservative former appellate judge J Michael Luttig, a long-time critic of Trump, and former district court judges Nancy Gertner and Shira Scheindlin. CBS News reported.
The move comes after a week of growing opposition to the deal and at least one other lawsuit seeking to block it.
Retired U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan police department officer Daniel Hodges, who were both on-duty and injured by rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, sued Trump last week in U.S. district court in Washington, D.C.
“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J Trump created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance insurgents and paramilitary groups,” their lawsuit said.
“The Fund, by its very existence, encourages those who commit violence on behalf of the president to continue doing so. Dunn and Hodges already face credible threats of death and violence. [a] regularly; The fund significantly increases the danger.”
Opposition also came from Trump’s own Republican party. Senior figures in the US Senate have expressed “concerns” that the money could be funneled to convicted criminals, and the chamber last week kept on hold $72 billion immigration enforcement funding bill backed by Trump.
One Economist/YouGov poll This week it was revealed that 52 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of those who consider themselves supporters of Trump’s hard-line Maga (make America great again) agenda oppose the fund.
The Justice Department and acting attorney general Todd Blanche defended it. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American,” Blanche said in a statement last week, claiming that applications for payments would be open to anyone who felt they were subject to politically motivated investigation.
However, on the Truth Social platform, Trump said the payments It was directed at those “so badly abused by the evil, corrupt and weaponized Biden administration.”
Among the first to express interest was Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group. Tarrio was pardoned by Trump last year after being sentenced to 22 years in prison for plotting to overturn Biden’s victory.
owned by Tarrio he told PBS News He said he believed he was entitled to “somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars” from the fund.
Tarrio last year sued the government for allegedly violating his civil rights, and the justice department announced last month that it was seeking to overturn the seditious conspiracy convictions of leaders of the Proud Boys and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, stemming from the Capitol attack.
