The Justice Department on Monday said it will abide by a federal court ruling that puts the Trump administration’s controversial $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund on hold while a legal challenge plays out in court.
The Trump administration had said the fund would be available to those who alleged the federal government had been weaponized against them, a refrain popularized by some Trump supporters particularly during the Biden administration. Democratic lawmakers had called it a “slush fund” for Trump supporters, and even some Republican lawmakers were reluctant to support it.
A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia last week temporarily blocked the creation of the anti-weaponization fund after a lawsuit from Democracy Forward and others.
“The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people,” the Justice Department posted on X. “This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
The fund was to be created as part of a settlement between President Trump and his own Justice Department as a result of a $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS for his previously leaked tax returns.
The judge is weighing whether to make her pause more permanent, and plans to hold a hearing on the issue on June 12.
Separately, a judge in Florida who oversaw Trump’s initial lawsuit against the IRS is also weighing whether to reopen that matter after the government announced a settlement and both parties said they were dropping the case.
That judge, Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, had questioned whether the case was legitimate because the president was on both sides of the dispute. Williams, an Obama administration appointee, said she wanted to weigh whether the case amounted to deception and the court was itself “the victim of a fraud.” She gave Trump’s lawyers until June 12 to respond.
