WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that his $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund is “dead” while also continuing to defend it, further complicating his administration’s negotiations with two Republican senators who are blocking his attorney general nominee in protest. Trump told reporters at Camp David on Friday morning that administration officials had “agreed not to have a fund” that compensates his political allies, yet made clear that he disagrees with that decision. The comments came hours after an early morning social media post in which Trump said people who had been prosecuted by the Justice Department — many of them for their involvement in the violent Jan. 6, 2001, attack on the Capitol — “are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them.”
Trump’s reluctant declaration that the fund won’t be created came as Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, say they won’t support Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general until they see that promise in writing. They have been working for weeks with the White House and Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general, to produce a document to that effect, but both senators have said they aren’t satisfied so far. “The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it,” Tillis said after Trump’s initial social media post.Trump said in his post that Blanche should be immediately confirmed and is a “pawn in this whole thing.”
