Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) blasted the $1.8 billion fund President Donald Trump’s administration created to compensate people it says were targeted with investigations or prosecution for political reasons, calling it “stupid on stilts.”

Last week, the Department of Justice announced it had agreed to settle a lawsuit Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization had filed against the IRS for leaking their tax returns. It’s been a highly controversial move for multiple reasons: Trump as president is now in the role of both the plaintiff in his lawsuit and in charge of the defendant government agencies, the fund purports to allow distribution of funds without congressional approval, and January 6 rioters who were pardoned by Trump are seeking a share of the funds — even those who assaulted law enforcement officers.

Tillis has been increasingly outspoken during Trump’s second term, especially after announcing he would not run for re-election to the Senate seat he has held since 2014. Even before Trump finally endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the bitterly fought Texas Senate primary runoff, Tillis had blasted Trump for backing off from a reported initial plan to endorse Cornyn, calling it a mistake and bemoaning Republicans allowing this internecine election battle to continue to fester as “lazy and unstrategic.”

Tillis was interviewed by Spectrum News 1’s Washington correspondent Reuben Jones about multiple topics, and offered brutally unfiltered criticism of the fund.

“It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayers dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned and now we are going to pay them for that. That’s absurd,” said Tillis. “When you take money from me to give to a purpose that I vehemently disagree with, that’s tyranny, and that’s what that account is.”

Tillis also tossed some barbs at Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for refusing to rule out paying January 6 rioters who assaulted police officers, calling his comments “objectionable.”

“What we’re doing as Republicans now, the Democrats have been for years, yelling ‘defund the police’ and disrupting the police,” he said. “Now we’re looking no different than them.”

The North Carolina senator feels strongly enough about this issue that it may motivate him to vote against Blanche if Trump officially nominates him to hold on to his role in a permanent capacity. Blanche took over the gig on an interim basis after his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was ousted earlier this year amid the president’s frustrations about the handling of the Epstein files and disastrous performances at several congressional committee hearings.

“I don’t get into hypotheticals, but I don’t think that people have to go too far to see that anybody who equivocates and supported the thugs that harmed police officers will never get my vote in committee or on the floor,” Tillis told Jones. “They better not have anything in their record suggesting that what happened on January 6 was anything but one of the darkest days in American history.”

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