Andrew Duehren

And we don't know if these payments would be specifically to pay back any sort of legal fees they may have incurred or if there will just be payments beyond that where they could basically profit from the experience overall.

So there's not necessarily going to be clear receipts about who's receiving this money and how much money they're receiving.

Wow.

And so based on what we know right now,

This entire operation might be very hidden from public view, but obviously, you know, that's a live question.

That is certainly the scenario that people are asking a lot of questions about.

And that certainly seems possible under the way that this fund has been set up for sure.

Yeah, so the acting attorney general, Todd Blanch, happened to be scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss appropriations, the Justice Department's budget.

During the hearing, Blanch defended the arrangement by saying that the judgment fund, this pot of money, had been used in similar ways in the past.

But that hearing quickly became basically an opportunity for lawmakers and particularly Democrats to really push him on this arrangement.

And push him on what they called a slush fund that the administration had set up to pay the president's political allies.

In particular, these Democrats wanted to know whether people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th would be beneficiary of these funds.

Senator Chris Van Hollen accused Blanch of public theft of this money and said that it was part of President Trump's broader revenge tour during his second term in office.

But there are also signs that Republicans on Capitol Hill are a little squeamish about this whole idea.

You start to see some questions from them about what this money could be for and how it could be used.

And even the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, outside of the hearing, made some comments to reporters on Tuesday, essentially suggesting that Congress will be taking a close look at this pot of money.

And so even some of the mild discontent that we're seeing right now publicly from top Republican lawmakers is, I think, an indication that this is not something, again, that.

even people in President Trump's party are excited about or proud of.

And it sounds like there are concerns, too, even within the Trump administration.

The top lawyer at the Treasury Department, which will play a role in creating this fund, suddenly resigned on Monday, just hours after its creation.