Todd Blanche confirms anti-weaponization fund remains defunct

Attorney General Todd Blanche again said Wednesday the “anti-weaponization” fund he proposed, then later revoked, is “dead.”

During a press conference on the Department of Justice (DOJ) securing indictments of 11 individuals charged with orchestrating sham marriages, Blanche took issue with a reporter’s question on whether he would seek again to establish the fund. 

“I keep on saying this over and over again, but I’m happy to say it one more time. I have testified under oath that it’s dead. I have testified in front of the House where I wasn’t under oath, where I said it was dead,” Blanche told reporters. “I have answered questions after my hearing, where I said that it was dead.”

He later remarked, “I’m not sure how I can further … say that the anti-weaponization fund doesn’t exist, or we use the word ‘dead.’”

Blanche, who officially took on the full-time attorney general mantle on Monday, also noted he rescinded his initial May order authorizing the formation of the $1.776 billion fund.

Blanche did so in exchange for GOP Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) supporting his nomination — which passed the Senate via a 50-49 vote.

Blanche had previously backed off the fund after lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed concern that individuals convicted for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could seek taxpayer money. 

Multiple federal judges also took issue with the circumstances of the fund’s creation, which occurred via a settlement in President Trump’s reopened lawsuit against the IRS. 

Blanche on Tuesday also reiterated the language of his Aug. 2 order rescinding the fund, saying “there were never commissioners” in charge of the payout pot and that no money went to claimants from the fund. 

Even after the DOJ halted the fund, Trump has expressed support for it. After Blanche was sworn in as attorney general, the president told reporters the future of the initiative was “up to” Blanche, his former personal attorney. 

While he said Tuesday the fund as previously constituted was dead, Blanche said he and the president would support congressional legislation on the matter. 

“The president feels very strongly, as do I, that there were people who were victims of a Department of Justice that was absolutely weaponized, and he feels very strongly that he would want to make them whole, as do I,” the attorney general added. “But it will not be through the anti-weaponization fund, which, again, was never set up, and nothing has happened with it.”