By Jasper Ward
May 27 (Reuters) – California will impose a 100% tax on payments distributed under the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion fund for victims of alleged political “weaponization,” the state’s Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday.
“One thing I think we’re going to try to do … is tax 100%. Anyone from California who receives any of those funds, we want to tax 100% of those proceeds and that’s an action the state of California can take,” Newsom said. “It’s an action we look forward to taking.”
In a post on social media, the governor’s press office described the $1.776 billion fund as a “slush fund.”
Newsom did not indicate when the state would start imposing the tax.
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The fund was announced last week as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal settlement with the Internal Revenue Service after he initially sued the agency over his tax returns being leaked to the media.
Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 defendants last year. Some have now begun to calculate the cost of their prosecution, jail time and businesses lost in the hope of compensation for what they regard as abuses by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.
The unprecedented move is already facing a legal challenge by two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from rioters on January 6, 2021.
Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the legality of the fund, as well as a part of the settlement “forever barring” the IRS from auditing past tax claims by Trump, his relatives and his businesses.
“(The fund) could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned and now we’re going to pay them for that? That’s absurd,” said Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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