Congressman Says Trump Aims to Fund Own ‘Private Militia’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said President Donald Trump aims to fund his own “private militia” with a $1.8 billion fund for his allies.

This new fund, announced by the Justice Department on Monday, is designed to compensate people who claim to have been targeted by former President Joe Biden‘s Justice Department and Democrats as victims of “weaponization and lawfare.”

Democrats have slammed the move as a taxpayer-backed slush fund clearly created for a target audience: Trump’s allies.

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is part of a settlement Trump and the Justice Department reached, with Trump agreeing to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for his leaked tax returns.

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow asked Raskin on Monday night, “Is there anything else like this in U.S. history?”

“Nothing like it,” he said. “It’s thoroughly illegal and unconstitutional. Of course, Congress never voted to set up a $1.776 billion political slush fund for the president, and we never would pass such a thing. So it’s a complete violation of Congressional appropriations powers. Moreover, even if Congress wanted to do such a thing, which we never would, it would be unconstitutional, because the 14th Amendment says that money cannot be spent out of the federal fisc for the purposes of repaying people for insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”

Raskin called Trump’s entire administration “corruption, highway robbery every day,” slamming The Board of Peace for which Trump is “chairman for life” with “unchecked financial control.”

He also blasted the new Anti-Weaponization Fund as an “outrageous expropriation of the tax dollars of the people for political purposes to give to Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, rioters and insurrectionists, the people who beat up police officers” before adding, “It’s about funding or pre-funding Donald Trump’s private militia.”

The money for Trump’s new fund is set to come from a “special, unlimited account available to the Justice Department for settling lawsuits,” and the department will have “the authority to make monetary settlements without needing approval from Congress,” according to The New York Times.

“That is for actual judgments, verdicts, damages levied by a court against the United States or an honest, good faith settlement of claims that would have won in court,” Raskin told Maddow of the “judgement fund” as he continued, “And of course, like everything else, we’ve never had a problem with this up until Donald Trump, because he sees a pot of money and the dollar signs go off in his eyes, and he sees it as a political slush fund.”

He added:

And so now they want to convert this fund that has always been used honestly in Democratic and Republican administrations for the settlement of lawsuits or just the payment of verdicts to create this Anti-Weaponization Fund, which is the most Orwellian title you can imagine. It’s all about weaponizing the tax dollars of the American people to support Donald Trump’s private militia. If these people had real, viable causes of action against anybody, they would go to federal court. And the ones who have gone to federal court have lost their cases, overwhelmingly. And you can’t find a single case of somebody whose criminal conviction was reversed on appeal after they assaulted a police officer on January 6 or were convicted for seditious conspiracy, which means conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. If they had a real valid cause of action, they’d be in court getting it. But of course, Trump wants to take it out of the courts and put it under this little committee of mysterious appointees he has who are going to be exclusively responsible to him. Again, it’s just a complete rip off of the taxpayers and everybody can see what’s going on.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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