A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, created as part of an unprecedented settlement with the president, his family and the Trump Organization.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia entered the order Friday after a Jan. 6 prosecutor and others sued to block the fund last week.
The fund is being operated out of the Justice Department. Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized the fund. Opponents have labeled it a massive “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s allies. Its existence has alarmed some legal experts, in part because there will be very little public oversight over how it is managed. Senate Republican leaders last week punted a vote on a GOP package to fund ICE and the Border Patrol until June in part because of concerns over the fund, NBC News reported.
The Trump administration cannot take any further action on the fund while legal motions are pending, “which includes the transferring of money to the fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the fund,” according to the order.
The judge said the order was necessary to “ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund” while there are motions pending to block the distribution of funds. She set a hearing for June 12.
Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman, who heads the group that filed the suit, said the judge’s order “recognized the urgent need to prevent taxpayer dollars from being distributed through a secretive and unprecedented political compensation scheme” that needed to be fully reviewed by a court.
“This is a victory for transparency, the rule of law, and the American people,” Perryman said in a statement. “No administration has the authority to spend public money through a political rewards program that Congress never authorized.”
The process to apply for money can’t officially begin until five commissioners are chosen to decide how the money is doled out, though people who claim they were targeted by the government have already requested money. The White House referred questions to the DOJ.
“The Department remains extremely confident in the legality of the Anti-Weaponization Fund which is supported by ample precedent, including Obama-era settlements,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement. “We will not allow the policy preferences of judges to interfere with our efforts to provide restitution to victims of lawfare.”
It’s also not clear how people would formally apply. The pool of possible applicants is substantial, according to the DOJ.
Andrew Floyd, who headed a task force in the now-closed Capitol Siege Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, before he was dismissed in July, filed a declaration in connection with the lawsuit on Thursday. Floyd prosecuted cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
The Trump administration “is gifting the people I helped investigate and prosecute after January 6” access to what he described as an illegally created process designed to “rush money out the door to perceived political allies, while treating me and people like me as disfavored enemies.”
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