Hawai‘i Senator Mazie Hirono has co-sponsored an anti-corruption measure in an attempt to defuse a $10 billion lawsuit by President Donald Trump against the federal government.
The Corruption Clawback Act, which Hirono introduced Friday alongside Illinois senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, and California Senator Adam Schiff, would create a legal mechanism to reclaim government funds paid to a U.S. president unduly.
The measure is explicitly in response to multiple claims Trump has filed against the federal government, seeking billions of dollars in damages over government searches into his financial affairs. In 2024 and 2025, Trump filed administrative claims against the Department of Justice for $230 million over the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Russian ties to his administration and the 2022 FBI search into his Mar-A-Lago residence.
And in January, Trump sued the IRS and the Department of the Treasury for $10 billion over a leak of his tax information in 2019.
The bill allows the U.S. Attorney General to sue in federal claims court to recover funds paid to a sitting president by the government if the court determines that those payments “would not have been paid but for the individual holding the status, authority or duties associated with their position as President.”
The court’s evaluation would consider whether the presidential payouts were larger than typical settlements for similar claims by private citizens and whether they bypassed standard legal measures such as statutes of limitations.
The bill also requires that, whenever the government pays out more than $1 million to the president, the U.S. Comptroller General must present a report to Congress evaluating whether that payment was made unduly.
Hirono said in a statement that “the Trump regime’s corruption is rampant and starts at the top” and that the President “plots to steal billions in taxpayer dollars.”
The bill has yet to be voted on by either chamber.
Meanwhile, the U.S. House and Senate have voted on a handful of bills this week, including:
• The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, a bill providing funding for DHS, which has been partially shut down since February after a congressional standoff over funding for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The measure would provide $10 billion to ICE, albeit with some minor caveats: none of those funds could be used to contract out detention services if a contracted detention facility is deemed inadequate by performance evaluations, for example, and the ICE director would be required to provide monthly briefings breaking down the division’s expenses.
While the House narrowly voted in support of the measure last week — it passed 221-209, with Hawai‘i reps Jill Tokuda and Ed Case voting against it — a Senate vote Thursday failed to reach the 60 votes in favor needed to pass. Hawai‘i senators Hirono and Brian Schatz voted against the bill, with the final vote 51-46.
• The Housing for the 21st Century Act, which increases financing available for federal affordable housing programs, passed the Senate 89-10, although Hawai‘i's senators were divided, with Hirono in support and Schatz the only Democrat in opposition.
Schatz said on the Senate floor that a provision of the bill intended to prevent hedge funds from monopolizing single-family homes requires anyone who owns and rents out more than 350 housing units must sell those units after seven years, which will have spillover effects on developers of low-income housing, among many others.
“It was trying to capture the hedge fund problem, but they wrote it wrong,” Schatz said, adding that the bill is “positively Soviet.”
• The Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to pass the Hindering Oppressive Nations from Obtaining Revenue Act, or HONOR Act, a measure that denies any foreign tax credit to be claimed by the Russian Federation.
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