Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who signed off on the excoriated and imperiled deal to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claim to be victims of unfair prosecution by the government, is expected to face withering questioning by a House committee on Tuesday.
The hearing, a previously scheduled appearance on the Justice Department’s funding before the House Appropriations Committee, comes a day after the department committed to abiding by a federal judge’s order pausing the fund’s implementation until at least June 12, a decision some administration officials privately said could provide an off-ramp to unwind the plan.
The proposal has met fierce resistance in Congress, with Democrats and even Republicans calling it a slush fund to reward President Trump’s allies.
Mr. Blanche, appearing last month before the Senate Appropriations Committee, offered few details about how it would be implemented, and declined to guarantee that the money would not be doled out to those who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump has discussed backing off the plan to establish the fund, bankrolled by taxpayers, which was announced last month immediately after he agreed to settle a $10 billion lawsuit he had filed against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns. Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses also received significant immunity from audits as part of the deal.
Mr. Blanche has said he did not directly participate in the secretive negotiations that led to the settlement.
He had privately expressed concerns about a deal. But he determined that the plan, created by a subordinate and Mr. Trump’s private lawyers, including Boris Epshteyn, passed legal muster and assented, according to officials briefed on the talks.
Critics have accused the acting attorney general, Mr. Trump’s former lead defense lawyer, of sacrificing his department’s independence to serve a president he still views as a client.
In a wide-ranging podcast interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity released on Tuesday, a relaxed Mr. Blanche systematically attacked all the prosecutors who had overseen cases against the president, offering an unapologetic defense of his pursuit of Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution.
Mr. Blanche, ditching his standard suit for a polo shirt, assailed the former special counsels Robert S. Mueller III and Jack Smith, who had handled federal investigations into Mr. Trump. Mr. Blanche also attacked state and local prosecutors, including Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who had pursued cases against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Blanche openly talked about the so-called grand conspiracy investigation that seeks to tie many of those inquiries together in a single purported plot to deprive Mr. Trump of his rights, breaking sharply with a Justice Department policy that bars the public discussion of ongoing inquiries, particularly those involving grand juries.
“There is a grand conspiracy investigation, correct?” Mr. Hannity asked, in an interview recorded over the Memorial Day weekend.
“Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Blanche responded. “One hundred percent.”
Mr. Blanche then revealed information about two grand juries, which typically sit in secret, hearing evidence in the case. He agreed with Mr. Hannity that one had been empaneled in Florida and the second in another state.
Mr. Blanche even disclosed some targets of the grand conspiracy case by name: James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director; John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director; and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence.
“Let’s talk about individuals,” Mr. Hannity said. “Comey? Brennan? Clapper?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Blanche said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Blanche and other senior officials have tried to blunt Mr. Trump’s attempt to monetize his grievances by obtaining government compensation for the leak of his tax returns.
The fund proposal allowed the president to drop his suit while creating a mechanism to provide payments to supporters who claimed they were also targeted unfairly.
“What we did was entirely legal and appropriate,” Mr. Blanche told Mr. Hannity. “And again, the Trump family gets nothing.”
But that proposal prompted a revolt among Senate Republicans, some of whom berated Mr. Blanche during a contentious meeting at the Capitol last month.
On Monday, the department signaled that it was re-evaluating the situation, but stopped short of pulling the plug, saying in a statement that it would abide by the ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily suspending payouts.
But that did little to ease the concerns of Republican senators, who have reacted with revulsion to a plan they view as an ethical minefield and a potential political liability in midterm elections already made treacherous by Mr. Trump’s declining popularity.
Democrats pledged to attach amendments to legislation that would defund the effort, adding to demands by Republicans for the Trump administration to kill the plan outright.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican leader, told reporters on Monday that the administration needed to make it “very, very clear” it was shutting down the fund.
