A bill to abolish the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and for other purposes.

Yes, there is, Mr. President.

Reserving the right to object, the President made clear that he would not seek any compensation from the anti-weaponization fund, and, for my own part, I have made it clear that I won't seek any compensation from the anti-weaponization fund.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, under oath, has said:

We are not moving forward with the fund, period.

Why is that not enough for my colleagues from across the aisle? Because they have a deeper and much darker motive. They want to erase the Biden Justice Department's unprecedented weaponization by abolishing every means of holding it accountable. I am not going to stand for it.

Has there ever been a more systematic effort to surveil and oppress the political operation of a sitting President's opponents than under Joe Biden?

We all know the answer. In fact, my esteemed colleague from Iowa Chairman Grassley has called it ``arguably worse than Watergate.''

The Biden DOJ's Arctic Frost Operation involved a taxpayer-funded army of lawyers obtaining financial information on over 400 individuals and groups that happened to support President Trump in the 2020 election.

Yet, despite serious internal concerns and objections that were raised within the DOJ that this wasn't a proper basis for a search, President Trump's home was raided, at Mar-a-Lago, in a made-for-TV operation.

This witch hunt extended even to the halls of the U.S. Senate. By now, everyone is familiar with how the Biden DOJ subpoenaed the records of eight Republican Senators--myself included--specifically because of conversations that we had in anticipation of a vote that was coming up on this matter.

That is a serious affront to congressional privileges, and it was a clear violation of the Constitution's speech or debate clause.

Did the Constitution matter to the Biden DOJ or to their allies at Verizon? It seems not. The Biden DOJ and Verizon violated the constitutional rights of numerous Republican Senators.

Several of my staff were among those with the temerity to serve in the Trump administration. Without any reason to think they were involved in any wrongdoing, members of my staff were subpoenaed, they were forced to hire counsel, and they were subjected to depositions. The costs can be ruinous.

As my staff was tortured, I saw firsthand how the process was the punishment. Think about it. If you could ruin someone's financial future, there is no need to prove them guilty. If you can set an example that working in a Republican administration will get you put on a ``do not hire'' list by left-leaning law firms or make you the target of taxpayer-funded investigations by a Democrat-controlled and weaponized DOJ, then you achieve another chilling objective--that is suppression.

Democrats in the last administration weren't satisfied with targeting Republican officials and staffers; they went even further. To take just one example, the DOJ under President Biden brought its enormous power to bear on the groups it hates the most. In my home State, that was pro-life demonstrators. Yes, that is right. When violent crime had skyrocketed in American cities across the Nation, the Biden DOJ devoted precious resources to criminally prosecuting peaceful pro-life demonstrators in my home State of Nashville, TN. They were letting go criminal illegal aliens, who would strike again, just so they could prosecute those whose politics they disagreed with. What a disgrace.

My colleagues across the aisle are simply trying to cover up and sweep under the rug the fact that the Department of Justice under President Biden became a tool to destroy his political opponents.

Just so there is no mistake, this is far from the first political controversy involving the DOJ's settlement authority. I won't recount all of the instances in which the Biden or Obama administration used DOJ settlement funds to funnel billions of dollars to their pet projects. Needless to say, my Democrat colleagues apparently saw no problem with that. Indeed, not a single Democrat ever cosponsored the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act in the 114th Congress, in the 115th Congress, nor in the 117th or the 118th Congress. Yet now, when any victim of the Biden DOJ's weaponization might actually receive some recompense--well, now, they have found religion. And even that is an overstatement.

Today's bill is different in the worst way from Republicans' previous efforts to constrain the DOJ's settlement authority. This proposal by the minority leader isn't an evenhanded proposal that would constrain Presidents of both parties moving forward; it would solely invalidate a single settlement agreement involving specific parties. This treads dangerously close to the Constitution's prohibitions against ex post facto laws and retroactive legislation, and I have serious concerns that it violates the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.

I can't stand for this unconstitutional, hypocritical bill; therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak before the previously scheduled recess.

Mr. President, I find it quite interesting that my Democratic colleagues are now seeking to somehow block some of the funds of the Department of Justice when they would never do this before. I mentioned earlier that Republicans put forward the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act. In four previous Congresses, not a single Democrat was willing to join; not a single Democrat was willing to help us rein in the Department of Justice. Yet, when we find abject weaponization of the Department of Justice, when we have my own staff-- and I would ask any of the staff in this room to think about it, put themselves in their shoes. If you happen to work in the White House under a Republican administration, then you can find yourself, under a weaponized DOJ, subject to subpoena, subject to depositions, and your parents are putting $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 of their life savings at stake to protect and defend their children. This is exactly the conversation I had with my staff and their parents. It is heartbreaking. It needs to stop, and there needs to be accountability so this never happens again.

I am not about to stand here and just sweep this under the rug and act like the weaponization of the Biden DOJ never happened. Not in history has anything happened like this before, where a sitting President goes after his opponent and all of his opponent's allies-- subpoenaing U.S. Senators' phone records, like they did mine; having a corrupt operation with--it appears Verizon and the DOJ colluded. Maybe Verizon had a particular transaction like the Frontier acquisition that they wanted to curry favor with DOJ to achieve and therefore just violated the Constitution and handed my records over, along with other U.S. Senators'.

This should not be allowed to happen. We can't, as Americans, act like it never did, and to accept Senator Schumer and my colleague Senator Padilla's recommendation would somehow give credence that nothing ever did happen. Indeed, the worst weaponization of government that we have ever seen in our lifetime did happen under the Biden administration.

I will not stand for it.

Mr. President, this past January 6, I introduced a bill we titled the ``No Rewards for January 6 Rioters Act'' because, as we knew, as we saw just last year, one of the very first things Donald Trump did when he came back into office was to issue pardons for every person convicted of crimes connected to the January 6 insurrection-- people convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers for trying to not just subvert an election and the peaceful transfer of power but by assaulting Congress itself, assaulting Capitol Police officers, threatening to hang the then-Vice President of the United States.

But we know that abuse of power, these pardons, were just the beginning. Since then, there has been an active campaign to raid taxpayer funds to reward those who stormed and ransacked the Capitol. So I for one was not surprised when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a corrupt settlement to create a $1.8 billion slush fund for Donald Trump to reward the perpetrators of the January 6 attacks. And I hope you all noticed--because it doesn't happen very often--that the outrage, the pushback on this fund was bipartisan. Many in Congress on both sides of the aisle viewed it as an unacceptable abuse of power. As a result, Mr. Blanche has testified to Congress that the fund is ``dead.'' But in the court proceedings, he, the Department, and the President refused to put it in writing. No one has been willing to confirm under penalty of perjury that the fund will never go forward. Why? What are they holding back on?

Now making matters worse, the President is still using this corrupt settlement to shield himself and his family business from review by the IRS permanently. That is right. The President of the United States sued his own government, led by an Attorney General who happened to be his personal lawyer, and they reached a settlement

to bar the IRS from ever reviewing his tax returns--not just for himself; for his family, for his trusts, and his affiliated companies.

So it is obvious to the American people that Congress needs to act to rein in this corrupt behavior.

I should underscore a point here because on the one hand, there have been these measures to block the creation of the fund. There are other ways for payments to go out from the Department of Justice. So it is not just the creation of the fund that needs to be blocked; payment to those convicted of violence on January 6 needs to be explicitly clear.

Now, I am a little surprised but not shocked at what I have seen in the last couple of weeks because now we see Republicans reverse quickly. Just a couple weeks ago, many of them were very concerned about this proposal. Yet, simultaneously, they would come to the floor to block my bill to prohibit the payouts to January 6 insurrectionists. Now, today, they have objected to Senator Schumer's bill to fix this once again.

So let me be clear: This fight is not over. The American people cannot and will not bear the cost of corruption that this administration has created.

While the slush fund is apparently dead for now, we have our eye on the many financial claims that were filed by January 6 insurrectionists that are still pending at the Department of Justice given other programs and pots of funding, which is why, colleagues, unless we pass my legislation, there is nothing to stop the DOJ from handing hard- working American taxpayer money out the door to January 6 rioters. And until we pass Senator Schumer's legislation, President Trump will continue to seek lifetime immunity from tax audits.

If our Republican colleagues will not join Democrats to address this, I guarantee you the American people will.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are going to speak on eliminating Trump's slush fund.

Now, the only way--the only way--to ensure Trump's $2 billion taxpayer-funded MAGA slush fund and his family's sweetheart tax fraud deal with the IRS--the only way we are going to ensure that they never see the light of day is to ban them permanently by law. Republicans need to stop playing dumb and realize Trump has absolutely zero intention to table his slush fund.

Just listen to him. Just this month, Trump said:

Personally, I think the weaponization fund is a great idea,

and so do many other Republicans.

``So do many other Republicans.''

I repeat. Trump said:

I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do

many other Republicans.

I invite Republicans to prove Trump wrong, support this bill, outlaw this corruption, say it is a terrible idea on the floor so that we can eliminate it permanently, once and for all.

Republicans have passed up opportunity after opportunity to ban these corrupt cash handouts for Trump, his billionaire friends, and his cop- beating January 6 insurrectionists.

That is what he wants to do, Americans. Instead of using money to reduce your healthcare costs, instead of using money to reduce your electric costs, your housing costs, your food costs, he wants to give it to his corrupt friends and probably, somehow, to himself.

Will Republicans listen to the empty promises of Trump's personal fixer, Todd Blanche, or to the outraged cries of the American people, who despise--despise--this corruption?

Will Republicans help Trump and family cheat on their taxes or will they stand up for American taxpayers?

Will Republicans funnel billions of dollars to Trump, MAGA billionaires, cop beaters, convicted criminals; or will they work with Democrats to lower costs for working families?

That is the question before us today, plain and simple. Trump's slush fund,

his permission slip for tax fraud, and his nonstop grifting are a running tally of corruption's cost and proof that Trump hasn't drained the swamp; he has just slapped a pool liner on it. In short, Trump isn't draining the swamp. He is swimming in it, and he likes it.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4791, submitted earlier today. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

My colleague from Tennessee talked about things being swept under the rug. Nothing--nothing--sweeps under the rug this statement of Donald Trump's:

Personally, I think the weaponization fund is a great idea,

and so do many other Republicans.

He is going to do it unless we stop it. The objection is so unfortunate. It allows Trump to continue with his slush fund.

I yield the floor to my colleague from California.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.