President Trump says he’s not sure if his “anti-weaponization” fund is really dead—“I’d have to ask the lawyers” was his response when asked about it.
He took pains to add that the fund “was a beautiful thing…so important.”
The thing of beauty, in case you haven’t been following the story, is a $1.8 billion kitty the Justice Department created last month as part of a settlement between the IRS and Mr. Trump. The president, for his part, agreed to drop the $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS over tax documents of his that were leaked to the press over 2018-2020 by an IRS contractor.
The “The Anti-Weaponization Fund” was intended to “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
But, after the plan was blasted by not only Democratic lawmakers but some Republicans, too, the Justice Department did an about-face and withdrew it, at least for now—“not moving forward” on it, was how Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it. Congressional Democrats subsequently tried to deal the deal a death blow but failed in that gambit.
The withdrawal of what Mr. Trump had conceived and touted for weeks was wise, but also, in a way, worrisome.
Not that the fund was ever a good idea. It was widely perceived as a way of awarding the president’s most ardent supporters, even those who were fairly and properly judged to have committed crimes—like many if not all of the 1,270 January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters.
The president pardoned or commuted their sentences last year but may have felt that they deserve monetary compensation as well.
And the proposed fund not only might have rewarded criminals—some of whom were violent and some who were even arrested for other crimes after their pardons. It might have backfired on the president by allowing his critics (“enemies,” in today’s overheated political nomenclature) to apply for financial windfalls. After all, the Trump administration has also weaponized law to go after others.
Like former FBI Director James Comey, whom the Justice Department indicted twice in cases that experts have deemed legally dubious. When the fund was still in play, he told CNN he might apply himself for a payment. “It’s to compensate people who have been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political, or ideological reasons,” he said. “So I’m guessing, I’ll be in line…ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sacked the Capitol.”
The administration’s retreat on the compensation fund, though, is also disquieting. Because it reveals that the president, who has always been seen as someone who ignores nay-sayers and does whatever he believes is right, is also subject (at least in midterm season) to be pliable under pressure.
And the greatest pressure bearing down on him presently is the conflict with Iran.
Mere weeks ago, Mr. Trump reiterated his insistence that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile (what he called “Nuclear Dust!”) must either be turned over to the US or destroyed at another location with International Atomic Energy Agency oversight. And he implied that if Iran balks, attacks on the country could resume.
Last Thursday, however, Mr. Trump was less belligerent. “We could get [Iran’s enriched uranium] right now,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, but “there’s no reason to. It’s entombed.”
The president didn’t indicate any flexibility on the issue of ultimately defanging Iran’s nuclear weapons development. But his reluctance, in the likely event of Iran’s refusal to budge on the issue, to send American troops into the country to seize the nuclear material is notable.
Especially in light of his having backed away from his previous demand for an end to all Iranian enrichment, saying on May 15 that he would accept a 20-year suspension of uranium enrichment.
Neither the president nor readers of these words need any reminder that Iran regularly vows to destroy Israel, risibly denies it has ever sought nuclear weapons, has enriched uranium far beyond the levels required for a civilian program and has obstructed inspectors from accessing its facilities.
As negotiations drag on, may the president have those facts front and center in his mind, and act his usual unconstrained self.
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