Judge extends block on Trump's anti-weaponization fund

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — In a setback for the Trump administration, a federal judge on Friday indefinitely extended a block on a nearly $1.8 billion planned anti-weaponization fund meant to distribute payouts to those targeted by the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema signaled that she would consider declaring the case against the administration moot if Todd Blanche, acting attorney general, along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sign a declaration under penalty of perjury that the fund would not go forward “in any manner, or under any name.”

Brinkema gave officials a week to submit a sworn declaration confirming no payments were made under the fund and that the fund wouldn’t be revived.

Blanche has informed Congress that the government would not go forward with plans for the fund. The administration contended in a Friday hearing that given this announcement, the case is moot.

Brinkema — who had previously issued a temporary halt on the funds — quizzed U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Andrew Block about why the administration had not rescinded the order creating the fund.

When Block said he didn’t know, Brinkema remarked, “there’s a huge gap in the record” without an answer to that question.

President Donald Trump — who has referred to the Bill Clinton-appointed Brinkema as a “radical left” judge — has said he really wanted the fund. And when the president of the United States says he wants something, Brinkema remarked, “that’s a pretty good indicator there will be an incentive and motive to make it happen.”

The lawsuit is being led by a coalition of organizations and individuals — prominently including Andrew Floyd, a former assistant United States Attorney who headed a task force that prosecuted individuals involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The groups charge that the administration “has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it.”

After the hearing Friday, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, representing the plaintiffs, said the court “recognized the serious legal concerns raised by the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to create a secretive, taxpayer-funded compensation program operating outside the constitutional safeguards that govern public spending.

“Despite the administration’s shifting explanations about the future of the slush fund, the court’s order ensures that taxpayer dollars cannot be distributed through this unlawful scheme while the courts fully consider the serious constitutional issues at stake,” Perryman added.

The fund was widely criticized on both sides of the aisle as a “slush fund” for Trump’s political allies, with worries that it opened an avenue for people convicted of violent crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol to seek financial restitution.

The fund was purportedly part of a settlement to a lawsuit that Trump filed against his own administration claiming that the disclosure of his tax return information by a former government contractor entitled him to $10 billion in damages.

In the settlement, the president and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit were provided a liability waiver that permanently protects them from audits and prosecutions.  The DOJ also announced the establishment of the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund.

The slush fund money was to come from the Judgment Fund, money reserved under the U.S. Treasury for “final judgments rendered by a district court,” as well as “compromise settlements of claims referred to the attorney general for defense of imminent litigation or suits against the United States.”

In discussing the use of this money, Brinkema read from an amicus brief filed by a pair of senators, Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican:

“To deliberately deploy public funds, in violation of the Constitution and the laws of this nation, to compensate these perpetrators, is to use the machinery of democratic government to subsidize an attack on that government’s most fundamental processes. Congress itself, as both victim and the federal government’s sole appropriating authority, has a compelling institutional interest in ensuring that no public fund is converted into a reward for those who laid siege to it,” the senators wrote.