Is Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization” Slush Fund Dead? Or Is It Undead?

The Trump administration has abandoned its plan to create an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that would funnel nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars into the hands of the president’s political allies. Or has it?

After announcing the fund’s creation on May 18 as a part of a settlement agreement resolving Trump and his sons’ lawsuit against his own IRS, the Justice Department abruptly reversed course in the face of political and legal backlash. “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on June 2.

But don’t mistake retreat for surrender. The administration scrapped the fund in characteristically shifty fashion, leaving open the question of whether it is truly dead or merely on pause. At the hearing, Blanche refused members’ entreaties to issue a written order rescinding the program. Even that would seem not to suffice, because the settlement agreement between the government and the Trumps, which obligates the attorney general to establish the fund, provides in Section VIII that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.”

More importantly, the fate of the fund itself may be beside the point. Existing law already provides the Justice Department with the tools it needs to funnel taxpayer money to many of the same beneficiaries. In the wake of the fund’s alleged demise, will the administration use those tools to accomplish its objectives by other means? And, if so, can Congress or the courts do anything to stop it?

Let’s dig in. (Our May 20 piece, “The President Who Sued Himself,” covered the fund’s backstory in great detail. We will link back to that piece below where it is helpful.)

Why Did the Justice Department Scrap the Anti-Weaponization Fund? Is It Really Dead?

During his appearance before the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Blanche did not explain—and no committee member asked—why the Justice Department reversed course on its plans for the fund. But the answer is hardly a mystery. The fund’s purported demise came in the wake of bipartisan political blowback and a pair of court orders that left the Justice Department scrambling to save face. 

The political backlash had been swift. Democrats in Congress denounced the fund as an unlawful slush fund designed to reward Trump’s political allies. But even Republicans, in a rare show of resistance to the administration’s priorities, questioned the propriety of the scheme. Those concerns intensified after Blanche, during a May 19 appearance before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, refused to say whether individuals convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6 would be barred from compensation. Days later, Senate Republicans reportedly blasted Blanche in a closed-door meeting about the fund, which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) described as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.” The uproar ultimately stalled the budget reconciliation process for the administration’s immigration enforcement operations, with some Republicans refusing to advance the broader package unless the administration scrapped the fund.

Meanwhile, litigants wasted little time seeking to halt the fund. Within days of Blanche’s order establishing the scheme, several lawsuits challenging its legality were filed in federal courts in Virginia and Washington, D.C. The most promising of these suits is likely the one filed in the Eastern District of Virginia by Democracy Forward on behalf of several individuals and entities pressing a wide variety of reasons why the fund is unlawful (and asserting several different claims as to standing, arguably the greatest hurdle in the case). That suit led U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to issue an injunction on May 29, temporarily halting the program while the parties briefed the question of whether she should order a longer-term block. (A hearing is set for June 12.)

Also on May 29, in the Southern District of Florida, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams reopened Trump v. IRS, the case that had spawned the fund in the first place. The turnabout followed a motion by a group of former federal judges, who urged Judge Williams to revive the case she had previously closed in order to investigate whether the “collusive” litigation between Trump and his own government amounted to a “fraud on the court.” In her order, Judge Williams said that she is empowered to investigate “serious misconduct” under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which permits courts to impose sanctions if an attorney advocates a frivolous position or files litigation for an improper purpose. She ordered Trump’s attorneys to respond to the allegations of misconduct by June 12.

Against this backdrop, on June 1—just one day before Blanche’s scheduled appearance before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee—reports surfaced that the Trump administration planned to scrap the fund. Later that day, the Justice Department put out a statement that at first blush seemed to confirm as much, citing Judge Brinkema’s injunction as the reason the department would not proceed. But the statement was slippery. It described Brinkema’s order as prohibiting implementation of the fund under any circumstances, omitting that her injunction was temporary and set to expire in roughly two weeks. And it did not resolve whether the fund was truly dead or merely paused while the litigation ran its course.

Blanche appeared to answer that question the following day, telling the committee, without elaborating, that the Justice Department was “not moving forward with the fund, period.” But in a podcast released on June 3, Trump muddied the waters. Asked whether he was dropping the fund, he said: “No, a court ruled against it.” And hours later, in the Oval Office, asked why he was dropping it, Trump said that “a radical left judge ruled against it, and we’ll see how that all works out.”

All of which leaves open the possibility that the Justice Department could reverse course at a later date—say, after the midterm elections.

If the Fund Is Actually Dead, Could Trump Still Pay His Political Allies with Taxpayer Money?

Yes. In fact, he’s been doing so for the past year even without a dedicated slush fund.

Since June 2025, Trump has paid out at least $8.6 million to the sort of people who MAGA talks about when it talks about weaponization. The administration has even used the w-word to justify the payouts. Asked about the settlements, a Department of Justice spokesperson told the Washington Post that “it was our predecessors who weaponized the Justice Department against President Trump’s allies” and that settlements were necessary because “[t]he weaponization of the Department of Justice against ordinary Americans during the Biden-Garland era stands as a shameful stain on the department’s history.” Most of the payments resolved claims filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA); below are the ones of which we are aware:

• Ashli Babbitt. The family of Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6 while attempting to break into the chamber of the House of Representatives, received $4.975 million in June 2025 to settle their FTCA case. The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police said the settlement “sends a chilling message to law enforcement nationwide, especially to those with a protective mission like ours.”
• Michael Flynn. Despite having pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017, Flynn received $1.25 million in a March settlement of his 2023 FTCA case. A district court judge had dismissed his suit (with leave to amend) in December 2024. (The government and Flynn are finalizing a settlement of a separate Flynn suit in which he challenges a reduction in his Army retirement pay for allegedly receiving funds from a foreign government for a speaking engagement without receiving approval. A district court denied the government’s motion to dismiss in February.)
• Carter Page. Page received $1.25 million in April to settle claims that he was illegally surveilled by the FBI while advising Trump’s 2016 campaign. He had lost at the district court and the court of appeals, but the government settled his case while his long-shot petition for the Supreme Court to hear his case was pending.
• Mark Houck. Prosecuted and acquitted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, Houck reportedly received over $1 million in April to settle his FTCA claims against the FBI for how it arrested him, even though a district court had dismissed his case and deemed his allegations “not plausible.”
• Alex Berenson. Berenson sued the Biden administration for allegedly coercing Twitter to kick him off the platform due to his tweets regarding COVID-19, in violation of his First Amendment rights. The district court dismissed his case, but the government nonetheless settled with him last month; terms were not disclosed, but Berenson has said that he received $150,000.

$8.6 million is a drop in the bucket compared to $1.776 billion. But if the Justice Department is so inclined, there are many more possible settlements in the pipeline. According to the Washington Post, over 450 people accused or convicted of participation in the Jan. 6 attack have filed FTCA suits. At least one suit, filed in March, is a proposed class action on behalf of “hundreds or potentially thousands” of class members who allegedly were the victims of “indiscriminate” use of force by police officers defending the Capitol. (Even former Trump lawyer Stefan Passantino has filed a FTCA suit, alleging that the Jan. 6 committee defamed him in connection with his abortive representation of Cassidy Hutchinson.) Given that Trump pardoned over 1500 people in connection with the attack, that leaves quite a few to come—and of course the administration’s weaponization fetish extends far beyond Jan. 6.

Under normal circumstances, procedural legal hurdles could trip up claimants. But this administration might just choose to plow through them. The FTCA requires that, to file suit, one must first have filed an administrative claim with the agency that allegedly committed the tort within two years of injury and then file suit in federal district court within six months of the agency’s denial of the claim. For many, this hurdle should block a claim, although those who were imprisoned or still facing charges at the time of Trump’s blanket clemency could try to wriggle around it.

Alternatively, a plaintiff could file a so-called Bivens claim directly under the Constitution—as several Proud Boys did in a 2025 suit alleging malicious prosecution. The statute of limitations clock for such a claim doesn’t start ticking until the prosecution is resolved in the claimant’s favor, which plaintiffs would presumably argue occurred when Trump pardoned them. To be sure, there are many reasons why such a claim would fail on the merits—many of which the Justice Department discusses in its motion to dismiss the Proud Boys’ lawsuit.

But among friends, do any of these barriers matter? As we noted in our earlier analysis of the fund, the Justice Department was willing to overlook a mammoth statute of limitations problem with Trump’s original lawsuit in order to “settle” it by establishing the fund. It is unusual, to say the least, that a party would settle a case that a plaintiff has no chance of winning.

Where the government has made clear that its wallet is wide open, the usual barriers to filing frivolous litigation or administrative claims tend to dissolve. Normal obstacles—such as the time and expense of finding and paying lawyers—are likely to melt away.

And the administration doesn’t need a dedicated fund in order to ring up a massive bill. With limited exceptions, all settlements are paid out of the Judgment Fund, a permanent, indefinite appropriation from Congress that essentially serves as a bottomless pit to pay out unlimited sums of money in response to actual or threatened litigation. The legislation establishing the fund gave virtually no oversight role to either the judiciary or Congress. That means that no one but the administration can make decisions about payouts, whether it’s one settlement creating a $1.776 billion fund or 1,776 settlements of $1 million apiece.

The Judgment Fund depends on, well, good judgment. As law professor Todd Peterson wrote in 2009, the Justice Department “has the power to compromise and settle . . . claims for amounts that may not reflect their legal merit but rather the desire of the executive branch to compensate plaintiffs whom they deem worthy.” Trump is not the first president accused of misusing the fund. The Clinton administration compensated Japanese Latin Americans interned in the U.S. during World War II, even though they had no chance of prevailing in court, The Clinton administration also used the fund to reimburse Pakistan for an arms deal that Congress had cancelled. And the Obama administration received criticism for settling claims of farm loan discrimination, brought by Hispanic, female, and Native American farmers, for sums in excess of the litigation risk facing the government. (Tellingly, Blanche’s May 18 order establishing the fund cited those three cases—and only those three—as precedents.)

And this isn’t even the only context in which the Trump administration stands accused of Judgment Fund abuse. House Democrats have alleged that the administration improperly tapped the Judgment Fund to pay a French company $1 billion after the Department of the Interior killed its offshore wind project.

Some Jan. 6ers are very aware that they can cash in even without the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio—who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison before Trump pardoned him in January 2025—texted PBS’s Liz Landers earlier this week: “I believe even if this fund is killed in courts or at a congressional level, the President will find a way … They can just settle the claims and lawsuits. That has no judicial review or congressional oversight. And it would mean a lot more money in compensation.”

Another Jan. 6er, Philip Grillo—who was convicted of charges related to the Capitol breach and sentenced to 12 months in prison before being pardoned by Trump—said that his lawyer, Trump’s longtime personal friend Peter Ticktin, told him that the president would most likely “go ahead and settle our tort claims and our lawsuits.” In a recent interview with ABC News, Ticktin said he has already filed claims on behalf of approximately 200 Jan. 6 defendants and that he plans to file 200 more, citing renewed interest and optimism around the prospect of compensation following the announcement of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. (He also filed a FTCA lawsuit on behalf of Jan. 6ers last week.)

And the administration is well aware, too. “White House officials said the administration could still settle cases without a fund” was the final line in a Wall Street Journal article about growing concern in Trumpworld over the fund’s political downside. And in a June 2 tweet, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the Department of Justice’s second-highest Senate-confirmed official, indicated that the department may settle individual claims via the FTCA despite the fund being scrapped. “We’re on it,” he wrote in response to a post in which Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recommended that approach to compensate “victims of the weaponized Biden Justice Department.” Woodward later deleted the post without explanation.

What About the Immunity Agreement?

During his testimony before Congress earlier this week, Blanche was unequivocal that one aspect of the settlement remains in place: the document he issued on May 19, which purports to extend wide-ranging legal protections to the Trump family and its “affiliates.”

As we have previously explained, the language in Blanche’s document is quite broad. It is also poorly drafted. We think, upon reflection, that it immunizes the Trumps for essentially everything they have done to date to the extent that the defendants—the Treasury Department and the IRS—could have brought claims against them for violating the law. (Our initial article concluded that it applied to claims that any federal entity could have brought, not just Treasury and IRS.)

At the House hearing, Blanche insisted that it was “standard” and “typical” for the IRS to “get rid of” past or ongoing tax audits as part of a settlement agreement. That may be true in settlements that resolve a disputed tax assessment. What Blanche failed to mention is that Trump’s underlying suit had nothing to do with a tax audit. Instead, it arose from the leak of his tax returns by an IRS contractor. And some of the language in Blanche’s May 19 order is highly unusual, including a provision that extends its legal protections to “affiliates” of the Trump family.

However one parses the document, this much is clear: the Trumps stand to benefit significantly. As the New York Times previously reported, one IRS audit that Trump has been battling for years could have cost him more than $100 million. That audit would likely be 86’ed under the terms of Blanche’s May 19 order.

Still, we remain doubtful that Blanche’s order would be binding on a future administration—or, for that matter, that he had authority to issue such an order in the first instance. A future attorney general could rescind the order, and a future IRS commissioner could resume any audit it purports to extinguish.

What Can Congress Do?

As is so often the case during the Trump era, a Congress with sufficient political will could stop this entirely or mitigate its effects. The Judgment Fund and the FTCA are creations of Congress, which could restrict the amount of payments, or limit the circumstances where payments can be made. For example, Congress could require congressional approval for payments over a certain threshold, or could require judges to adjudicate certain obvious defenses, such as a statute of limitations bar, before money could be paid. In January, Senators Alex Padilla (D-Cal.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) unsuccessfully tried to amend an appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2026 to forbid payouts to Jan. 6 attackers; now there may be more momentum for a push to enact limits for Fiscal Year 2027, which begins Oct. 1.

But we’re not holding our breath. Just now, Senate Republicans voted down efforts to amend the GOP’s $70 billion reconciliation bill to block or limit the fund. The Senate approved the bill, which provides massive sums to ICE and CBP, in the wee hours of this morning. Senate Republicans were concerned that Trump would veto the bill if it banned the fund—further evidence that it is not actually dead.

What About Litigation?

The pending lawsuits aren’t going away, but it will be much harder for outside litigants to defeat case-by-case settlements than to defeat the creation of a global fund—which was going to be hard enough already.

The five lawsuits currently pending against the fund will continue because the administration has not actually ended the fund. The settlement agreement that committed the Justice Department to create the fund remains in effect; Blanche could announce tomorrow that the fund is back. In a normal world, a party cannot tear up a settlement by declaring that it will not do the thing it promised, in writing, to do. Thus Trump, as plaintiff, could sue the Justice Department to force it to live up to its side of the bargain. (That Blanche seems untroubled by this possibility may indicate that the fund is very much undead—or, alternatively, it may demonstrate just how collusive this lawsuit has been from the start.) Thus, individuals and organizations who sued to block the fund will likely keep going until they secure a permanent injunction blocking it.

These plaintiffs may also try to adapt their suits to block any attempt by the administration to do the same thing by other means. This will not be easy because there won’t be a clear target to aim at. Litigants could attempt to establish that the Justice Department has an unwritten policy of paying settlements in certain categories of lawsuits that are literally unwinnable—for example, due to statute of limitations issues—and that such policy (and therefore such payments) should be enjoined. Establishing such a policy would be an uphill battle, and establishing their illegality would push courts into undiscovered territory. And this is on top of the standing concerns that we discussed in our initial piece. (Our initial piece did not discuss possible First Amendment and equal protection claims of the sort raised in the Democracy Forward suit discussed above. The plaintiffs raising those claims might have better chances as to standing, but we will leave that discussion for another day.)

What’s the Upshot?

Whether dead or just taking a nap, the Anti-Weaponization Fund’s ambitions are very much alive. The administration has made no secret of its intent to compensate the political allies it paints as victims of Biden-era persecution—and it has the tools to do so with or without a dedicated fund. The lawsuits challenging the fund will continue, but challenging individual settlements is a far steeper climb than attacking a single sweeping program. The Republican-led Congress, meanwhile, has shown little appetite for a direct confrontation on the matter. Absent a fundamental shift in the political calculus, the administration is likely to press on, settlement by settlement, toward the same goal the fund was always meant to reach. If so, your taxpayer dollars will reward those who attempted the violent overthrow of our democracy.