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President Donald Trump is poised to drop several lawsuits against the federal government in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate individuals who claim they were targeted by the Biden administration.
According to ABC News, Trump is expected to drop several lawsuits against the federal government — including a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — in exchange for establishing the commission.
The proposed five-person commission would oversee the distribution of roughly $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to people who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s alleged "weaponization" of the legal system, including nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Trump commuted the sentences of 14 individuals charged in the attack on January 20, per ABC News, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
“They were patriots as far as I was concerned," Trump said last year in an interview with Newsmax. "I talk about them a lot. They were treated very unfairly."
Sources familiar with the discussions told ABC News that the compensation fund is likely the main condition for Trump dropping several legal claims against the federal government.
These include a $10 billion lawsuit stemming from the 2019 leak of his tax returns and $230 million in legal claims arising from the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica, and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” a spokesperson for Trump's legal team told ABC News in a statement. “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable."
The proposed fund would have limited oversight and could allow commission members to privately distribute taxpayer money, with Trump retaining the authority to remove them without cause, per ABC News.
“This administration is dripping with corruption from top to bottom, but rushing a settlement to steal $1.7 billion taxpayer dollars for a slush fund before a judge can toss your junk lawsuit would be among the most corrupt acts in American political history,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told HuffPost in an interview on Friday.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (MD-08), one of the authors of a bill introduced in February to prevent January 6 rioters from receiving federal payouts, also spoke out against the commission.
“He’s trying to create a $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other insurrectionists,” he said. “Congress would never pass that."
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