Just days after the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche to be attorney general, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are putting him on notice.
On Thursday, all 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department — wrote a letter to Blanche raising concerns about alleged “misused federal resources” by the DOJ, including alleged attempts to work around the now-defunct anti-weaponization fund.
It’s the first letter from committee Democrats to Blanche since he permanently took the reins of the DOJ on Monday.
“We write to express profound and continued alarm regarding the apparent systemic abuse of Department of Justice (DOJ) resources through settlement agreements to reward President Trump’s political allies,” Democrats on the panel wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by MS NOW.
The group — led by Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. — is accusing the DOJ of circumventing the anti-weaponization fund by paying Trump’s political allies funds from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, which has been in existence for decades as a pot of money used to pay settlements of lawsuits filed against the government.
The senators pointed to a $4.9 million settlement agreement with the estate of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed inside the Capitol after storming the building and trying to breach the House chamber on Jan. 6, 2021; a $1.25 million settlement with Michael Flynn, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first administration; a $1 million settlement with Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist; and a $1.25 million agreement to settle with former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The Democrats say these payments show that, even without the anti-weaponization fund, the administration is still paying Trump’s political allies.
“Despite your assurances that President Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is ‘dead,’ the Justice Department continues to funnel taxpayer money from DOJ’s Judgment Fund to political allies of the President who might otherwise have filed claims with the Anti-Weaponization Fund,” the committee Democrats wrote.
“We are deeply concerned by this Administration’s continued efforts to use taxpayer resources – including the Judgment Fund – to reward its allies, while claiming to disavow any payouts through the Anti-Weaponization Fund,” they continued.
The letter comes after Blanche, in the midst of a hotly contested confirmation battle, formally rescinded the order creating the anti-weaponization fund to shore up GOP support. In the signed order, Blanche said “the Fund is not operative.”
The order, however, didn’t placate Democrats. Lawmakers pointed out that Blanche didn’t specifically say if the order establishing the fund was permanently withdrawn, leaving open the possibility that the DOJ could try and restore it down the road.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee re-upped those concerns in their letter.
“The documents you released on August 2, 2026, do little to assuage these concerns, as they provide no guarantee DOJ will not simply revive the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do,” they said.
Beyond payments from the Judgment Fund, the Democrats also cited reporting that said DOJ officials are looking into other ways they could pay Trump allies and Jan. 6 rioters. The group cited an article in The Atlantic titled “Trump Isn’t Giving Up on His Slush Fund,” which reported that, “Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track.”
Asked by MS NOW in the Oval Office last week if there were other avenues that he could use to allow individuals to be paid, President Donald Trump said there were “no other avenues that I know about.”
Still, Democrats aren’t satisfied. They want Blanche to respond to a series of questions by Aug. 21 about the anti-weaponization fund and payments from the Judgment Fund.
The post Democrats put Todd Blanche on notice about DOJ payouts to Trump allies appeared first on MS NOW.
Author: Source Author
From MS Now.
Leave a Reply