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Raskin: Trump aiming to fund ‘private militia’ with ‘anti-weaponization’ fund

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by Ryan Mancini - 05/19/26 9:48 AM ET

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by Ryan Mancini - 05/19/26 9:48 AM ET

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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Monday accused President Trump of seeking to fund a “private militia” with the newly announced “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate the president’s allies who say they were wrongly targeted or investigated by the Biden administration.

Raskin told MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow that “nothing like this” has been done in U.S. history, calling the name of the fund “the most Orwellian title you can imagine.”

“It’s all about weaponizing the tax dollars of the American people to support Donald Trump’s private militia,” he said. “If these people had real, viable causes of action against anybody, they would go to federal court, and the ones who have gone to federal court have lost their cases overwhelmingly.”

The Maryland Democrat expanded on his point about a private militia by saying the fund was an “outrageous expropriation of the tax dollars of the people for political purposes to give to Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, rioters and insurrectionists, the people who beat up police officers.”

He also called the fund “thoroughly illegal and unconstitutional,” having not been authorized by Congress.

“Moreover, even if Congress wanted to do such a thing –– which we never would –– it would be unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment says that money cannot be spent out of the federal fisc for the purposes of repaying people for insurrection or rebellion against the United States,” Raskin added.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday announced the creation of the $1.776 billion compensation fund that will “have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants,” further noting that there is “no partisan requirement” to file a claim.

The fund was created as part of a settlement in the president’s now-withdrawn $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), having sued the agency after a contractor released Trump’s tax return information to new outlets.

Raskin, in speaking with Maddow, echoed Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in comparing the fund to a “slush fund.”

“And of course, like everything else, we’ve never had a problem with this up until Donald Trump, because he sees a pot of money and the dollar signs go off in his eyes, and he sees it as a political slush fund,” Raskin said.

Cassidy, who lost his primary bid over the weekend, was the lone Republican to criticize the formation of the fund.

“Wait a second, I just came off the campaign trail,” he told reporters Monday. “People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting a slush fund together without a legal precedent.”

The DOJ did cite the Keepseagle v. Vilsack case as a legal precedent, but a group of 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief to block the fund’s formation.

“The unprecedented posture of this suit fundamentally disregards Article III’s case or controversy requirement and raises the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history,” the amicus brief reads. “No controversy can exist when the plaintiff controls the defendant, as President Trump does here.”

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS “was never about justice, it’s another self-enrichment scheme on the backs of hard-working taxpayers.”

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