Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
President Donald Trump on Friday said that he still wants compensation for people he said were victimized by a weaponized federal government while acknowledging that a planned $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is “dead” after the Department of Justice walked it back amid congressional opposition and court rulings.
“It is dead,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Friday.
“But I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused … and I’d like to see them compensated for their pain.
“Their families have been ruined. Many, many suicides—they’ve committed suicide,” he also said in the meeting, which was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
“People that were very successful, that wanted to go to a rally or an event and ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror.
“And this fund, this fund was not for me,” he said.
“This fund was for those people.”
Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced the fund as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit where Trump had sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide money for individuals who claimed to have been targeted by “weaponization and lawfare” under the previous administration. Trump’s lawsuit with the IRS was over a leak of his tax returns.
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