WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump drew sharp rebukes from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill after he left the door open to taxpayer payouts for rioters who assaulted police officers during the Jan.6 attack in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” over the weekend.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Trump’s planned “anti-weaponization” fund, which appears to be on pause amid bipartisan backlash, “should be for people who have had their constitutional rights violated, not who violated other people’s constitutional rights,” Sen.
Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Monday.“If you’ve been convicted of assault on a cop ...
doesn’t seem to me like people who are victims.”Sen.Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee, told NBC News he plans to introduce legislation this week to bar anyone convicted of offenses related to the attack on Jan.
6, 2021, or interfering in recent presidential elections from receiving taxpayer-funded federal payouts related to the Capitol riot.“The attorney general claims that he is not going to go forward with a slush fund for the Jan.6 criminals, but the president still wants to see them receive money,” Schiff said in an interview in the Capitol.
“I want to make sure they can’t use some other mechanism to pay these people off, so that is the necessity of the bill.”01:39Trump says anti-weaponization fund is 'a great idea'00:0000:00“The attorney general’s word is not good enough under any circumstance,” Schiff added.The attorney general in question is Todd Blanche, who has served in an acting capacity for the past two months and whom Trump officially nominated to the post Monday.Blanche, who previously was Trump’s personal attorney, recently promised lawmakers that the controversial $1.8 billion Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund was dead following a GOP revolt against the fund that brought Trump�...