Trump appointee caused ethics panic over plans to apply for slush fund: report

A senior Justice Department official in charge of relations with Congress wanted to recuse himself from working on the Trump administration's so-called "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — because he wanted to apply for money from it.

According to Politico, Patrick Davis, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, "raised his plan to file a claim with others at the DOJ in May because he viewed it as a conflict" — but his colleagues were alarmed by this development "in part because he was responsible for communicating the department’s reasons for setting up the fund to lawmakers."

An insider source told the paper, “[Davis] has relationships with the senators, and it was a very tough time for him to back out. In a very fraught moment, with legislative affairs and stuff with the Hill, DOJ needed to have the head of leg affairs involved.”

The fund was to be created as a supposed settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for allowing his tax information to be compromised.

All of this comes after the Trump administration, facing intense pressure from lawmakers in both parties and bad press over the possibility Trump could dole out money from the fund to his political allies, scrapped the fund.

Republicans were debating language in the reconciliation package that would permanently bar the fund from being revived, but ultimately decided not to include it.