A New York lawmaker says state residents who tap the Trump administration’s controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund should be required to pay a 100% state income tax on that money.
Assemblyman Alex Bores, who represents part of Manhattan, said in a video posted to X that President Donald Trump should not be using “your tax dollars” to reward Jan. 6 insurrectionists and other Trump allies with money from what he called “an illegal slush fund.”
“It’s simple, if you’re a New Yorker and you take from this illegal slush fund, New York state will tax 100% of it,” Bores said in the post on X. “If you storm the Capitol and you take from this slush fund, too bad we’re taking it.”
To accomplish this, Bores is crafting a bill called the Anti-Insurrectionist Act, which is described in a draft memo to the State Assembly as a means of ensuring that “no resident of this State is enriched by what is, in substance, a publicly-funded political payout negotiated between the President and his own Administration.”
“We can’t stop Trump from breaking the law in Washington,” Bores, a Democrat, said in an emailed response to questions from NBC News. “But we can decide that in New York, money you got for attacking American democracy is fully taxable.”
The White House referred a reporter seeking comment on Bores’ proposed bill to the Department of Justice, which did not immediately respond.
Bores is one of 10 Democrats running for Congress in a district led by Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. And what he is proposing appears to have some similarities to the “Slush Fund Act” put forward last week by Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee to “prevent a sitting president from profiting from lawsuits against the United States government.”
“Our legislation would ensure any sitting president who sues the U.S. government faces an 100% tax on any payout that they receive from a trial or settlement so that innocent taxpayers don’t get stuck footing the bill,” Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a similar 100% tax on money received by residents in his state.
“That’s an action the state of California can take, and it’s an action we look forward to taking,” Newsom said in a clip posted on X Wednesday.
The “anti-weaponization” fund has sparked bipartisan criticism and been hit with several lawsuits since it was unveiled last week by the DOJ as part of the president’s settlement with the IRS.
The Justice Department announced that it would create the fund “in exchange” for Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, along with other claims of damages related to a 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents and the Russian collusion scandal connected to the 2016 presidential election.
The DOJ said it would involve a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
The fund drew bipartisan opposition. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said about half of Senate Republicans in a closed-door meeting last week with Attorney General Todd Blanche were unhappy with the fund, and a group of House Democrats characterized it as a “slush fund” Trump could use to “reward allies, including the nearly 1,600 defendants convicted or charged in connection with the January 6th attack on the Capitol.”
Trump, in one of his first acts upon taking office, pardoned the vast majority of those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, who hailed from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Roughly 80 to 90 of the insurrectionists were from New York state, according to databases compiled by NPR and the Seton Hall University School of Law.
If this bill passes, those residents would be subject to the 100% state income tax if they received any money from the fund, according to the memo supplied by Bores’ office.
“This bill ensures that no New York resident will retain any part of those distributions,” it says. “A rate of 100% is appropriate because these distributions are not, in any conventional sense, compensation. They are not the product of an adversarial proceeding, of findings by a neutral adjudicator, or of any determination of legal liability made by a person outside the President’s own circle of appointees.”
In trying to defend the fund, Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that “anybody can apply” to get money from this fund. Even, hypothetically, Hunter Biden could also make a plea for restitution, Vance said.
As it happened, the first person to file a claim with the fund was not a Jan. 6 defendant but political operative and longtime Trump ally Michael Caputo.
Caputo is seeking $2.7 million in restitution while claiming that he was the target of “Crossfire Hurricane” — an FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Two years after that election, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that Russian President Vladimir Putin had indeed tried to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.
