Washington — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said a two-hour meeting Thursday with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization fund” was “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.” 

“There were fireworks at an epic level,” Cruz said Friday on his podcast. “Fiery does not begin to cut it.” 

Blanche was dispatched to the Capitol to try and convince skeptical Republican lawmakers to drop their opposition to the nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay people who claim they were politically persecuted. The announcement of the fund — part of a settlement to resolve President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS — came as senators prepared to vote on a reconciliation package to fund border security and immigration enforcement through the end of Mr. Trump’s term. 

The reconciliation measure is unrelated to the Justice Department fund, but Democrats vowed to force votes on amendments targeting the fund during the Senate’s vote-a-rama on the funding package, which was expected to begin Thursday. Instead, lawmakers canceled votes after the Blanche meeting and went home for the Memorial Day recess. 

“We were going to lose those amendment votes because of the 40-plus Republicans in the room, I’d say half of them were ready to vote with the Democrats on this,” Cruz said. “If the judgment fund had not been announced this week, we would be right now on the Senate floor, we’d be funding border security.” 

“We will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don’t, they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate,” he added. 

Cruz said about 45 of the 53 Senate Republicans were attendance and “at least half of them were blasting the attorney general and they were pissed.” 

“They were screaming at the acting attorney general,” he said. “There were multiple senators who were yelling at the attorney general — and it was not calm, it was yelling — and they were saying this feels like self-dealing.” 

Cruz said Blanche tried to assure senators that Mr. Trump and his family, as well as those who assaulted police officers or committed acts of violence connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, would not be eligible for pay outs from the fund. Some Jan. 6 defendants have already said they intend to apply for payouts. 

“Todd Blanche was adamant, and he said not just ‘no,’ but ‘hell no,'” Cruz recalled about the response to senators’ concerns about the Jan. 6 defendants.

In a statement Thursday, a Justice Department spokesperson said the meeting included “a healthy discussion on the settlement.”

“[Blanche] made clear that the Anti-Weaponization Fund announced Monday has nothing to do with reconciliation, indeed not a single dime from the money the President is seeking in reconciliation would go toward anything having to do with the Fund,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with the Senate to get critical reconciliation funds approved.”

Alan He

contributed to this report.