Growing chorus of Republicans pledge to 'kill' Trump’s $1.8 billion DOJ fund

News of President Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund is getting a cold reception from some conservative lawmakers, who have expressed confusion about it and said that it "doesn't pass the smell test," while a growing contingent also plans to 'kill' it.

Trump had previously sued the IRS for $10 billion, claiming damages from the leak of his tax materials during his first term in the White House. This week, it was announced that Trump would settle the suit instead and receive $1.776 billion for a fund he claimed would be used to pay victims who were supposedly targeted by the government for their political beliefs. In practice, critics have argued that the plan for the money still represents a massively corrupt extraction of tax dollars for Trump, which could potentially reward allies who commit crimes on his behalf.

Members of Congress are among those skeptical about the situation. Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican who turned independent after his district was targeted by gerrymandering, told C-SPAN that the fund is "strange and unprecedented."

"Of course, I have concerns; it's very strange and unprecedented, it's very concerning," Kiley said.

When pressed about the controversial notion that Jan. 6 rioters might get payments from the fund, Kiley expressed further confusion about how things might work.

"I don’t know why anyone is receiving any money from this fund," the congressman continued. "That's not the way we typically adjudicate claims... and certainly, I would think that, you know, those wouldn't be people that would be at the top of the list, even if there were a basis for such a payout. So, I'm still learning about it. It's a very unusual arrangement. I think that there does need to be congressional oversight into exactly how this came about, and what exactly is going to be the criteria for any distributions.

Elsewhere, during a Wednesday CNN appearance, Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, expressed further doubt about the trustworthiness of the fund. This came after Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that he was "not a fan" of the idea.

"I will tell you, my reaction was, this doesn't pass the smell test," Curtis told host Dana Bash. "Now, that said, I'm willing to learn more about it and its intent, but I suspect you might find this might be one area where you might find a lot of bipartisan questioning of whether or not this is a good idea."

Curtis declined to definitively say that he would try to block the fund, reiterating the need to learn more about it, as well as his overall skepticism.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, meanwhile, joined a growing chorus of conservatives planning to try and "kill" the fund. He made his stance clear in a clip shared to X by reporter Scott MacFarlane, who added that it "doesn’t bode well for Trump’s $1.7 billion fund for convicted crooks and rioters."

"We're gonna try and kill it," Fitzpatrick said when pressed about his reaction to the news. "We're considering legislative options. We're gonna write a letter to the [attorney general] to start, but we're considering a legislative option. We're trying to unpack exactly what the legal machinations are, but you can't do that."

Fitzpatrick also said that he had never heard of anything like the provision of the settlement that states that Trump and family can never again be audited by the IRS, and said that undoing it would "of course" be part of the legislative response.