Unanimous Consent Request--S. 4791

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, this past January 6, I introduced a bill we titled the ``No Rewards for January 6 Rioters Act'' because, as we knew, as we saw just last year, one of the very first things Donald Trump did when he came back into office was to issue pardons for every person convicted of crimes connected to the January 6 insurrection-- people convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers for trying to not just subvert an election and the peaceful transfer of power but by assaulting Congress itself, assaulting Capitol Police officers, threatening to hang the then-Vice President of the United States.

But we know that abuse of power, these pardons, were just the beginning. Since then, there has been an active campaign to raid taxpayer funds to reward those who stormed and ransacked the Capitol. So I for one was not surprised when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a corrupt settlement to create a $1.8 billion slush fund for Donald Trump to reward the perpetrators of the January 6 attacks. And I hope you all noticed--because it doesn't happen very often--that the outrage, the pushback on this fund was bipartisan. Many in Congress on both sides of the aisle viewed it as an unacceptable abuse of power. As a result, Mr. Blanche has testified to Congress that the fund is ``dead.'' But in the court proceedings, he, the Department, and the President refused to put it in writing. No one has been willing to confirm under penalty of perjury that the fund will never go forward. Why? What are they holding back on?

Now making matters worse, the President is still using this corrupt settlement to shield himself and his family business from review by the IRS permanently. That is right. The President of the United States sued his own government, led by an Attorney General who happened to be his personal lawyer, and they reached a settlement to bar the IRS from ever reviewing his tax returns--not just for himself; for his family, for his trusts, and his affiliated companies.

So it is obvious to the American people that Congress needs to act to rein in this corrupt behavior.

I should underscore a point here because on the one hand, there have been these measures to block the creation of the fund. There are other ways for payments to go out from the Department of Justice. So it is not just the creation of the fund that needs to be blocked; payment to those convicted of violence on January 6 needs to be explicitly clear.

Now, I am a little surprised but not shocked at what I have seen in the last couple of weeks because now we see Republicans reverse quickly. Just a couple weeks ago, many of them were very concerned about this proposal. Yet, simultaneously, they would come to the floor to block my bill to prohibit the payouts to January 6 insurrectionists. Now, today, they have objected to Senator Schumer's bill to fix this once again.

So let me be clear: This fight is not over. The American people cannot and will not bear the cost of corruption that this administration has created.

While the slush fund is apparently dead for now, we have our eye on the many financial claims that were filed by January 6 insurrectionists that are still pending at the Department of Justice given other programs and pots of funding, which is why, colleagues, unless we pass my legislation, there is nothing to stop the DOJ from handing hard- working American taxpayer money out the door to January 6 rioters. And until we pass Senator Schumer's legislation, President Trump will continue to seek lifetime immunity from tax audits.

If our Republican colleagues will not join Democrats to address this, I guarantee you the American people will.

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