Remarkable use of our tax dollars
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President Trump’s top aides have discussed whether he should kill the administration’s nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund in exchange for getting immigration enforcement funding passed next month, according to people familiar with the matter.
More than a dozen Republican senators have privately urged top Trump aides to drop the fund since its creation last week, said people familiar with the outreach, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is usually supportive of the president’s efforts.
Administration officials have grown increasingly concerned about the viability of the fund, people familiar with the matter said, which had been expected to provide payouts to an array of Trump allies.
Trump hasn’t agreed to drop the fund, but has told allies that he understands he has political problems with Senate Republicans, the people said. On Friday, a federal judge ordered a pause on efforts to stand up the fund while she weighs a legal challenge in an Eastern Virginia federal court.
Senate Republicans pressed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on the fund at a contentious meeting last week that Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) referred to as one of the roughest in his years in the Senate. Another person who was at the meeting said it was the toughest grilling of an administration official they had ever seen from Republican senators.
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A federal judge signaled Friday she may reopen a legal case between President Trump and his own government that led the Justice Department to create a controversial $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund," ordering the president's lawyers to respond to allegations of "deception" and "fraud."
U.S. Judge Kathleen Williams issued the four-page order after dozens of retired federal judges asked her to reopen the president's lawsuit, arguing the government and Mr. Trump may have "deceived" Williams into dismissing the case.
Williams wrote that the former judges raised "grievous allegations" that Mr. Trump sought to dismiss the case "solely to avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit that 'was collusive from the start' and was only filed to provide the imprimatur of legality for an unlawful settlement."
She directed the president to file a response by June 12, laying out their responses to the former judges' allegations of "collusion" and "deception," and "the question of whether the case should be reopened because the Court was the 'victim of a fraud.'"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-orders-trump-answer-questions-anti-weaponization-fund-fraud/
@wtg From the brief filed by 35 former federal judges:
“The parties have used this lawsuit—which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the Court even had jurisdiction—as a means to allow a “commission” controlled by the President to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the President and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them.
And the parties have plainly tried to shield this conduct from necessary judicial scrutiny by short-circuiting this Court’s inquiry into whether the lawsuit is in fact an actual case or controversy by [seeking to dismiss the case] before they announced the “settlement”—clearly in hopes of preventing the Court from ever completing that inquiry, which, if it comes out against the parties, will undo their collusive “settlement.” ….
Accordingly, because “[t]he parties’ ‘collusive’ activity perpetrated a fraud on the judicial machinery itself, by fostering an appearance that the litigation involved adverse parties, when, in fact, it did not,” the Court should void its prior dismissal and reopen the case to assess in due course whether a fraud occurred.”
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The Trump administration signaled Monday it is backing off on the creation of a $1.8 billion fund announced by the Justice Department that could send money to allies of President Donald Trump deemed to be “victims of lawfare and weaponization.”
It comes after a fierce and rare backlash from Senate Republicans, who threatened to team up with Democrats to block the fund. About half the Republican conference appeared ready to vote with Democrats to restrict or kill it, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last week.
In a statement, the Justice Department cited a Friday ruling by a federal judge that blocked the fund on a temporary basis, saying it “disagrees strongly” but “will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
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