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WASHINGTON (CN) — A top House Democrat on Thursday unveiled a package of bills aimed at killing what he called a Justice Department “super pardon” for President Donald Trump in his recent settlement with the Internal Revenue Service.
The measure comes shortly after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers that his agency would not walk back the settlement agreement that permanently blocks the government from investigating the president’s past tax returns — despite axing a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that emerged from the deal.
And the bill, proposed by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, is part of a package of legislation introduced by the lawmaker codifying the end of the weaponization fund as some in Congress worry about whether the Justice Department will truly drop the program.
“If the administration and its allies in Congress are truly walking away from the $1.8 billion criminal enrichment fund, they should have no problem joining us in banning it outright,” Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Courthouse News in a statement. “But no one should be fooled by Trump and Blanche’s tactical pause: Nothing has been dismantled and nothing has been renounced.”
The congressman’s proposed legislation, dubbed the “Block Lawless Agreements and Nullify Corrupt Handouts and Emoluments,” or BLANCHE Act, would make it illegal for a sitting president to recover damages, pay attorneys’ fees or receive any other award from the U.S. government through a settlement agreement or similar deal. The president would also be banned from directing such a payment to a third party.
Any settlement agreement reached between the government and its chief executive would be invalid and non-binding under the proposed law, unless a federal district court issued a finding in a civil case that such an agreement is “not collusive” and that the U.S. government “made a good faith argument to explore available defenses to the claims at issue and has a reasonable legal basis for its decision to settle the action.”
The Justice Department last month announced a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service in the long-running lawsuit over the 2019 leak of the president’s tax returns.
As part of the agreement, the agency said it would stand up a $1.8 billion fund designed to pay out damages to anyone who believed they’d been unfairly targeted by the government. Critics of the program, including some Republicans, argued it could be used to compensate people convicted of violent crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Amid cratering support for the weaponization fund, Blanche told congressional appropriators this week the Justice Department would not move forward with the plan. But the acting attorney general refused to commit to rescinding the fund in writing — and Trump has since suggested he still wants to compensate victims of so-called government “weaponization.”
Blanche also said during a hearing Tuesday that his move to walk back the weaponization fund would not change other terms of the IRS settlement, including a provision that permanently bans the government from opening new investigations into the president’s tax information.
“Nothing has changed with that,” he told lawmakers, claiming such a block was standard for settlement agreements.
Meanwhile, Raskin on Thursday also unveiled a separate bill that would create a dedicated legal cause of action for people to seek damages from the federal government for violating their constitutional rights, which he said would ensure people “who have actually had their constitutional rights violated by the government” have access to justice.
The Maryland Democrat last month proposed a third bill that would block the use of federal funds for a Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that legislation is necessary to prevent the Trump administration from going ahead with the proposed program despite claims it is now dead.
“We cannot trust the Trump administration to abolish their corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday. “Congress must kill it by legislation. Permanently.”
And Texas Senator John Cornyn, a Republican who recently lost a tough primary battle to a Trump-endorsed opponent, shared a Wall Street Journal editorial Tuesday advocating for a legislative solution to the fund. “The way to ensure the Trump retribution fund is more than mostly dead would be for Congress to put a stake through it,” Cornyn wrote in a post on X, quoting the column.
The proposed weaponization fund proved a wedge last month for Senate Republicans negotiating a marquee budget reconciliation measure aimed at funding Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. The must-pass piece of legislation was nearly derailed following a tense meeting between Blanche and GOP lawmakers.
But after the acting attorney general — who previously defended the fund to Senate appropriators — walked back the program this week, reconciliation efforts again lurched forward.
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