Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday called on the Trump administration to scrap a nearly $1.776 billion Justice Department fund created to compensate people claiming to have been victimized by the Biden administration, saying the money could end up in the pockets of convicted January 6 rioters.
“It’s deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6th,” Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Let’s get rid of this fund.”
Pence made the same remarks across two Sunday morning appearances, hitting CBS’s “Face the Nation” and NBC’s “Meet the Press” while promoting his new memoir, “What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience.”
The Anti-Weaponization Fund was established by the Department of Justice earlier this month as part of the resolution of a $10 billion lawsuit President Trump filed against the IRS over its leak of his tax returns. Under the agreement, Trump dropped the lawsuit in exchange for DOJ creating the fund and issuing formal apologies to those it compensates.
Pence called the arrangement “a bad idea from the start” and said the Justice Department has existing legal authority to settle cases without creating what he termed “a slush fund.”
“I would encourage the administration just to drop it,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker. “Totally unacceptable,” he added on CBS.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the government from distributing any funds last Friday, placing disbursements on hold while legal challenges proceed.
Pence has been at odds with Trump since January 6, 2021, when he refused the president’s demand to block certification of then-President-elect Biden’s electoral victory. Rioters that day chanted threats against Pence, and the Secret Service evacuated him from the Capitol.
“I’ll never minimize what happened on January 6,” Pence said Sunday. “I’ll always believe, by God’s grace, we did our duty that day to the seat of the peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution.”
