Trump team abandons US$1.8 billion ‘slush fund’ to compensate supporters
The US Justice Department on Tuesday dropped a contentious plan to create a US$1.8 billion compensation programme that critics had denounced as a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s political allies.
“We are not moving forward with the fund,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during testimony before a House committee.
The about-face is a setback for one of Trump’s most divisive second term initiatives, which had drawn criticism from Democrats, legal experts and numerous Republicans in Congress.
A federal judge had already temporarily blocked the White House from moving ahead with the “anti-weaponisation fund” designed to compensate people who say they were treated unfairly by the US government.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema barred the administration from taking any further action to create or operate the fund while she considered imposing a longer-lasting pause.
The fund was created by the Justice Department as part of an extraordinary settlement of Trump’s civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor.