Jamie Raskin criticizes $1.7B Trump-IRS deal as a ‘political slush fund’
WASHINGTON, DC: A top Judiciary Democrat, Jamie Raskin, has slammed the potential 1.7 billion Truth and Justice fund, which will come into existence in the form of a settlement between President Donald Trump and the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department.
Trump will reportedly drop his high-profile lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for creating this taxpayer-funded pool.
The fund of $1,776,000,000 is reportedly designed to pay financial claims to individuals who allege they were victims of government "weaponization."
Raskin slams the fund as a ‘political slush’
The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin, blasted the potential fund as a "political slush fund" that he said is "illegal" and "unconstitutional."
Raskin’s statement came during an interview with ABC News' "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos, where he said that “only Congress has the power to appropriate money.”
“Congress never voted on creating this $1.7 billion political slush fund at the Department of Justice, and Congress would never pass that.”
"This is just an invention on his part, but even if Congress wanted to do it, I think it's clearly unconstitutional on a number of grounds," he added.
"We know that the president wants to keep setting up these political slush funds," Raskin continued.
"All of this is outside of the Constitution. All of it is outside of congressional spending power, and so it is illegal. It is unconstitutional."
Raskin said that compensating the now-pardoned January 6 rioters would be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Raskin says Democrats would file lawsuits
Raskin further called on Congress to stop the fund from moving forward. He further said that Democrats will “Undoubtedly” file lawsuits in response to Stephanopoulos’s question whether they will do so.
"But remember, we are the Article I branch. We have the power over spending, and so we have to assert our spending power to block this," he said. "If our Republican colleagues have any respect for the Constitution and the powers of Congress, they will move to block it."
Donald Trump is expected to withdraw his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.776 billion fund aimed at compensating individuals who say they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration.
