Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche has formally withdrawn President Donald Trump’s plan for a fund that could have been used to compensate people prosecuted over the US Capitol riot by Trump’s supporters in 2021.
The move clears the way for Blanche to be confirmed by US senators to his job on a permanent basis.
Trump’s Republican Party previously lacked the votes for this to happen because a pair of senators were not sufficiently satisfied by verbal assurances from Blanche that the planned fund was dead.
In a post on X late on Sunday, external, Blanche said he had “met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions”.
Attached to Blanche’s post was a copy of the written order signed by Blanche. The text says: “This Order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”
The proposed $1.8bn “anti-weaponisation” fund was announced earlier this year to settle a lawsuit by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns.
It would have allowed Trump allies to claim compensation for what they say were politically motivated prosecutions by previous administrations.
A second concern held by the two holdout senators was that the deal also shielded the president, his family and their businesses from IRS audits of their past tax returns. They wanted the scope of that to be narrowed.
Attached to Blanche’s post on X was an unsigned memo in which he said the IRS immunity would be limited to the “named parties in the lawsuit”. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, external were Trump, his two sons Donald Jr and Eric, and the Trump Organization.
The fund plan and the tax audit provision prompted alarm among Democrats – and some Republicans – who argued it could result in payment to people who were prosecuted over the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.
Following the backlash, Blanche abandoned the plan. A federal judge also blocked the fund and expressed concerns that it breached ethical guidelines.
