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- [00:01]
A
Yes, you can. A five minute, quick and easy calorie burning workout. Give it a try. Come join our sweat sesh on TikTok. Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, manager at the Bulk. I'm with Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots, and we're here to talk about the breaking news that just happened as we're recording this about 3:30ish on Monday that the Trump administration is planning for now to drop the highly controversial, blatantly corrupt $1.8 billion Anti Weaponization Fund that was set up through some ridiculous backroom settlement to basically reward J6 riders. For now. I'm going to put for now before everything, because with Trump, you never know. This thing is being pulled. According to administration officials, a number of outlets reported news Axios notice and so on and so forth. But yeah, Andrew, this is kind of interesting.
- [00:59]
B
Yeah, it sure is. I mean, this is sort of a. This has been an unstoppable force meets immovable object type story ever since it was very first reported. Right. I mean, like, it's an article of just sort of something we all know about the world now that Republicans don't stand up to Donald Trump, they let him do whatever he wants. They let him walk all over them. And yet this, from the minute it was reported was like, you've got to be fucking kidding about, like every single element of it from the way it came to be through Trump, you know, this ridiculous $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
- [01:31]
A
Let's talk a bit about the way it came to be.
- [01:33]
B
Yeah, let's just do this one more time from the top because we've done it a lot, but like, it bears doing Trump sue. Yeah. And it's so important.
- [01:38]
A
Right. It's like the most absurd context for this thing. Yeah. The 1.8 billion is crazy, but the actual context of this whole thing is even crazier. So go ahead.
- [01:49]
B
Trump sues the irs. They've leaked his tax returns. The guy who did it is in prison because he committed a crime. But that's not enough for Trump. He thinks he should get $10 billion in damages because his tax returns came out this way. That's a crazy number. But it's not that crazy when you think about the fact that if you're Donald Trump, you get to play both sides of the case. Right. Because you're President. You've been reelected president since you filed the lawsuit. You now are the plaintiff in the case in your personal capacity, and the defendants are your employees at the IRS and the Treasury Department. And everybody spends months Sort of like with this case on the back burner, there's all this other news going on, but anytime anybody brings it up, it's like, what's going to come of that case? That's sort of strange. Well, then we find out what's going to come of the case, because Trump settles it, and Trump and the IRS settle it. And not only do they settle it, but they settle it on an accelerated timetable because the judge who was overseeing the case, this judge named Kathleen Williams, had told them, hey, it seems kind of weird how the President is kind of on both sides of this. Please send me some briefs by the end of May about why I shouldn't see you guys as basically both being on the same side here. So instead of filing those briefs, they hustle out a settlement in the case. And not only is the settlement in the case, like, really good for Donald Trump, which obviously it was always going to be because he's playing both sides in the case. But it's like the most appalling, outrageous, ludicrous thing anybody could ever have imagined, which is this slush fund, this $1.8 billion federal slush fund for people who have claims of weaponization against them by the Biden Justice Department. And that might be January sixers. That might be other. Stop the steel heads. That might, that might be as administration officials tried to sell on Capitol Hill to get approval for this thing. That might be Republican senators who were targeted by Jack Smith's investigation, who had their phone records tapped as part of his investigation into Donald Trump's many alleged crimes in the wake of the 2020 election. So, like, I could keep going, but that should give people a good idea of just how jaw on the floor this was for everybody, including for many of those very Republican senators.
- [03:50]
A
Yeah. So why, I guess the question is now, why did they do this? You know, it's not the MO of the administration to sort of say, okay, you know, you're, we give in. You're right. We, we shouldn't do this. This is, you know, looks bad. In fact, that's not what they're saying. There's a couple things that are happening here. One is legal and the other is legislative. I'll start with the legislative. Congressional Republicans are trying to pass a reconciliation bill. It's like a budget bill they can pass with 50 votes in the Senate, majority in the House. They want to put a lot of ICE money into it. Remember, this is all extending. Andrew wrote about this back to the shutdown, and they have ICE money and DHS money and they want to get with a simple party line vote, but they can't do it right now because enough people on the Republican side in the Senate are objecting to the slush fund, and they want to put language into this bill saying that this slush fund can't be administered. And so if the administration wants to get that reconciliation bill over the finish line, they need basically to get rid of this. Which leads me to believe on the one hand that this might not be dead. Right. Like in the most cynical universe, you can see where they say, hey, we're taking off the table. Go and pass your bill. They pass the bill. And then they're like, actually, we, we thought about it and we want to. We do want to do this after all. Okay, that. That's my case. Why it might not be dead. My case for why it might be dead is the legal. Which is there were two judicial rulings recently. One was from the Eastern District of Virginia, which said they can't just halted disbursements of money from this fund. The other, more important one, I think was from Judge Kathleen Williams down in Miami, an Obama appointee who said she was launching an inquiry because she was. She was involved in this entire thing. And she was, she was overseeing the settlement. It's even ridiculous coming up, the argument,
- [05:30]
B
the case when it was supposedly. When supposedly these guys were on opposite sides of. Yeah, the whole thing is.
- [05:36]
A
And she was like, go ahead. No, no, it's fine. Because in the middle of it, she's like, it's very hard to adjudicate this when it's, like, unclear if there's adversarial sides here. Anyways, she. She let it, you know, after all that happened this weekend, she came back because 35 former judges said, you have to look into this. It's a fraud of the court. And she said, yeah, I'm going to look into this. I'm going to launch an inquiry into how this $1.8 billion slush fund came to be. And so that was a big turning point where she's like, I have to look into this because you may have misled the court. You may have defrauded the court. I need more information about how this happened. And that's something that the Justice Department does not want to see happen. They don't want any of that. So that might be why it's dead. Where do you come down on that? Dead or not dead?
- [06:22]
B
I'm leaning toward dead. Let me give you one additional reason. First of all, let me just say I really hope that inquiry goes forward. It doesn't seem to me they're taking it off the table. It's an egregious thing that they ever even tried this. And it should absolutely be looked into by Kathleen Williams, should absolutely be looked into by Democrats should they retake Congress next year. Like what a, what an appalling farce PED should roll over this. But, but the one other reason that I will add that it may be dead in addition to the ones that the one that you gave already is that. Well actually I'll give two real quick. This is the lesser one is Republicans in the House and the Senate are actually getting pretty fed up with Donald Trump in a way that we have not seen before where they, he is getting less popular than he's ever been and he has been monkeying with the normal Republican meal ticket, which is like the kind of quiet bargain that he's had with both, with everybody in both houses as far as the Republicans are concerned for years has been you just like suck it up and do what I want you to do and I will rubber stamp your reelections. And he has stopped doing that. He has started to get rid of senators who he thinks are not sufficiently maga, even though they have been like basically on his team like forever. So that's part of it. But I think the bigger reason why I just don't think Trump is going to fight tooth and nail for this one at the end of the day is it's not his money, right? I mean like this is not actually the same sort of thing. Like, like if, if the Senate or if some judge tried really hard to like claw back the billions of dollars that Trump has gotten in ill gotten crypto gains from like random foreign billionaires and the like oil and crypto barons of small Arabic countries in the Middle East. I think he would fight that one basically to the death. Right? Like that's money out of his pocket. Trump has always kind of seen himself as like sort of being magnanimous with this anti weaponization fund. He's like, I had a right to all this money and I'm just trying to give it to my supporters. And I can't believe people would make a stink about that. But like he's not, he does not care about these people the same way
- [08:22]
A
that he cares, but that presumes that he himself wasn't going to try to get a cut somehow, right? Like I know he said I'm not
- [08:27]
B
maybe, I don't know. I never really bought that he was barred from it. Like maybe the Trump organization would have tried to dip into it. Maybe not, but like, but it's not the same thing as like, you know, bars trying to take away his, just
- [08:39]
A
to be clear, something barred from it. You, the people he was going to appoint, the people who would decide how it was spent. So yeah, barred. I mean, barred from it. There's no law here. They're like making it up as they go along. So yeah, it would have looked bad, but it's 1.8 billion for friends of Trump. Like, I feel like he kind of wants that. I don't think it's dead. I'm going to take the side that I don't think it's dead. I think that they're just trying to get a little space here again. And this is Kyle Cheney over at Politico pointed this out on Twitter. He notes that the ruling from Williams did not mean the fund was dead. She, this is Kyle, I'm quoting him. She only ruled that for a two week period the fund would be on pause while she could sort it through the legal issues abiding by the court order, which is what the administration is saying. We could put up the Justice Department statement after. This does not mean killing the fund. So let's put up that Justice Department statement. It says this Department justice disagrees strongly with the decisions of the anti Weaponization fund put forth by the United States District Court judge in Eastern District of Virginia. That actually is, I should note, not Williams. This is the other judge. Where in the court state that under no circumstances may Department of Justice proceed with the anti Weaponization fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted or prosecuted, persecuted, I should say, whether they were Democrat, Republican, conservative, independent or otherwise. Department will abide by the court ruling. Okay, so maybe it is dead. This is the one that said they can't disperse money from it. So maybe it is dead.
- [10:09]
B
Look, there's two more things to say here, at least one of which is we are reacting in sort of a very early draft of this like we haven't heard word one from the White House about this. Maybe they're telling lawmakers and telling their friendlier press at Politico or Axios or whatever, like they're letting it be known that they're not going to pursue this anti weaponization fund and maybe they are simultaneously trying to lay some plan to get it on the back end or to do something else with the settlement of this case. That will also be unbelievably infuriating and evil. So setting all that aside for now, the one other reason why I think it is pretty likely dead is that I just. I am actually not sure that them pulling the weaponization fund is going to be sufficient to head off the congressional effort to actually block.
- [10:54]
A
Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Because John Thune was asked about this already. This is fast developing situation. And he told reporters that the best way to handle the $1.8 billion fund is for the administration to shut it down themselves, which, again, an act of legislation would just close the door on this. If they passed a law saying this can't be created, it can't. We're not appropriate funds for it. Whatever you use the language you want, it's done. But if Thune's like, hey, it's better that the administration just does this themselves, that gives the power back to the administration.
- [11:28]
B
Yeah, that would be basically abdicating responsibility for this by Thune. It would be a big miss.
- [11:34]
A
It'd be on brand.
- [11:35]
B
It's ironic because this is like a j sic, like slush fund. It would be completely tantamount to what the Senate did immediately after January 6, which is to say Donald Trump is shuffling off the scene. He's not gonna be president anymore. And for this reason, we think it would be sort of gauche and sort of lame and it would make our voters pretty mad for us to go ahead and convict him at his impeachment trial. And for those reasons, and that was what Mitch McConnell said at that time, that was what John Thune and the rest of Senate leadership were happy to go along with at that time backfired in a pretty spectacular way. Donald Trump is now the president again. And so notwithstanding all of these things, all of these legal, political things, why we are saying it very, very well may be the case that the weaponization fund is dead already, I am very happy to go ahead and say, no, Jonathan, don't be a coward. This is one of the most preposterous things ever proposed. Put some language in your bill saying they can't do it, cuz they tried once before. Who's to say they wouldn't try to do it again? Why not just. Just do it and be legends? That's what I think John should do.
- [12:33]
A
Just to clear up one element of this, the Eastern District of Virginia judge paused the establishment of the fund through June 12th as well, so she could have time to receive briefings and hold the hearing. So I just to clear that up. That means that the ruling that they're abiding by is merely that things are on pause until June 12th. It's possible the judge then determines it's totally fine and copacetic to go forward with the fund. But we shall see. So dead or not dead, we don't know. There is one other hurdle that's in this reconciliation bill that they need to clear up. So let's just assume that enough Republicans are fine with the administration saying, hey, we're cool, we're not going to use this fund. They still have the ballroom security money that they have to deal with. Remember, there was that whole $1 billion for ballroom security, and Republicans don't want to pay for that. So there's still that to clear up. That's a problem for the administration. Obviously, the weaponization fund kind of blew up in their face. Then you have the ruling over the weekend around the Trump Kennedy center, which was not great for the administration. And you know, this birthday party, the 250th birthday party, is not going particularly well for the administration. The musical acts are falling off. It's not been the best week on the stuff that Trump does care about.
- [13:47]
B
Yeah. And you can track this happening. It seemed like all weekend long, Trump was just posting one sort of really grumpy sort of, I can't believe you people don't appreciate what you have in me type post after another on Truth Social. I mean, he was posting about Iran. He was posting about the Kennedy Center. He had a weird post about the Kennedy center where he was basically like, I'm done. I'm done trying to fix this stupid institution and let this be your notice that we're going to give this thing back to Congress and it can be their problem from now on. Or you know, that he was so mad about the America 250 performers all, all backing out of his, his party on the Mall. He's like, you guys are thinking this is going to be too partisan. Well, fuck you. I'm going to make it like a Trump campaign rally and America's back rally on the National Mall right now. So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. Then just at one o' clock in the morning, he's on, he's on Truth Social being like, can you guys give me some space on my negotiations with Iran? Some of you want it to go faster, some of you want it to go slower, like, damn, let me cook. And it's just like, this guy is not happy. He's not having a fun time none of these things are going the way he wants them to go. It's a complete night and day difference from last year where he would, like, snap his fingers and things would happen and it didn't seem like anybody could get in his way and like all these different parts of civil society were lining up to come kiss the ring. And it's just he, he's, he is at the top of, of a failing presidency at this moment, and he's not having very much fun. And I think that's pretty cool.
- [15:12]
A
It is cool, I guess. All right, to recap the Trump administration, we. Andrew, I don't even know if. I guess I'll try my best to recap it. They have said that they're going to abide by a court ruling that puts the weaponization fund, the anti weaponization fund, the $1.8 billion Anti Weaponization Fund, on pause until June 12. Everyone's interpreting this as them saying they're done with the weaponization fund. It's not clear, I think is the best. There's two interpretations, whether it's dead or
- [15:45]
B
not, but we don't know. But the thing, the thing they're just. Because they're saying they're complying with this court ruling, that's from what all these other outlets are reporting, which is that they're privately communicating to the House leadership that they're going to drop the fund altogether. So they have said in public they're going to abide by this ruling temporarily, at least, is my understanding. But, but that is, that's not the whole of it. They are also, like, quiet communicating that they're talking, that it's over.
- [16:09]
A
Okay, we'll see what happens. We'll see if they can be trusted. I don't know if the record's too strong on that. Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots. I'm sure we're going to get some of this in tomorrow's Morning Shots. In fact, I know we are a little diddy from Will summer about the J6ers, and folks who are thirsting for some of that money are now a little bit confused. We'll give subscribe to Bulwark and Substack for that and subscribe to us on YouTube if you want stuff like this. Till then, talk to you later. Bye, buddy.