GOP Senators Want Answers on $1.8B Fund06/02 06:03

   Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next steps after the Justice 
Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation 
of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate President Donald 
Trump's political allies.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next 
steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court order 
pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to 
compensate President Donald Trump's political allies.

   GOP senators who revolted against the settlement before leaving for a 
Memorial Day recess two weeks ago say they want more information from the 
administration about the future of the fund, which could potentially go to 
Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 
Meanwhile, Trump is reconsidering whether to move forward with it at all, 
according to a person familiar with his thinking.

   Caught in the middle is legislation that would fund Trump's immigration 
enforcement agencies for three years. Republicans abruptly left town without 
passing it after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap or scale 
back the judgment fund, forcing Republicans to go on the record for or against 
it and endangering the money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border 
Patrol.

   Returning to Washington on Monday evening, Senate Majority Leader John Thune 
said he wasn't sure if the immigration spending bill would move this week.

   "To be determined," he told reporters.

   The extraordinary standoff comes after Trump announced the fund with no 
heads up to lawmakers as part of a settlement to resolve his lawsuit against 
the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. When word of the settlement broke, 
the Senate was navigating tricky passage of the immigration legislation with an 
added $1 billion in White House security costs -- including for Trump's 
ballroom project.

   Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned the White House security money from 
the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all unless the 
White House made major changes to the settlement.

   "I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to 
shut it down themselves," Thune told reporters Monday, referring to the fund.

   He said Republicans will have a better idea of how to proceed after they 
meet for their weekly conference lunch on Tuesday.

   Senators say they need more 'explicit' commitment

   The Justice Department said it would comply with a ruling Friday from U.S. 
District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who temporarily halted the fund for two weeks. 
The judge scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend her 
order.

   The department said in a statement that it strongly disagrees with the 
ruling but would comply.

   Republican senators weren't satisfied. They said Monday evening that they 
need more detail from the administration on what happens after that deadline 
before deciding next steps.

   "It's pretty clear that the president has to say very explicitly that 
there's not going to be a weaponization fund," said Senate Judiciary Committee 
Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

   Oklahoma Sen. Jim Lankford said Trump administration officials "need to say 
what they actually mean."

   "They need to say, we're setting this whole thing aside," Lankford said.

   Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that if the settlement is "completely 
pulled, then I'm satisfied. But I haven't heard anybody say that."

   Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the administration already 
has to abide by the court decision, "that's in the Constitution. I have to know 
more about their position."

   "Right now, the reconciliation bill looks like a broken arm with the bones 
sticking out," Kennedy said. "It won't move this week, in my opinion, unless we 
have some resolution on the weaponization account."

   Senators issue ultimatum to Justice Department

   The outrage of the fund came to a head last month at a closed-door meeting 
between senators and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that Republican Sen. 
Ted Cruz of Texas described on a recent episode of his podcast as "one of the 
roughest meetings I've seen in my entire time in the Senate."

   GOP senators had been discussing several ways that they could curb the fund, 
including limiting who can receive payouts, changing the makeup of the 
commission in charge of settlement decisions, adding some sort of judicial 
review for applicants or scrapping the fund altogether.

   Amid the backlash, a person familiar with the matter, who insisted on 
anonymity to discuss the president's thinking, said Monday that Trump was 
reconsidering whether to move forward with the fund. But the president has not 
said publicly what he intends to do.

   Also complicating matters is Trump's campaign-year push to defeat GOP 
lawmakers whom he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune's most reliable 
Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate. Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana 
and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids in May after Trump endorsed 
their primary opponents, and it's unclear how supportive they'll be of the 
president's agenda going forward.

   "I think it's hard to divorce anything that happens here from what's 
happening in the political atmosphere around us," Thune said before the Senate 
left town.