Justice Department officials on Monday announced the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a payment pool the department said is designed to compensate people who believe they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted for political purposes. The department said the fund is tied to a settlement resolving President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service that stemmed from the leak of his tax returns. The announcement immediately drew backlash from Democrats and government watchdogs who said the deal is unconstitutional and effectively enriches people close to Trump with taxpayer money.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department’s objective was to establish “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” In a statement issued Monday, Blanche also said, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.” Blanche, according to the reporting, did not address how investigations and prosecutions involving Trump’s political opponents under the Trump administration have revived similar claims of politicized law enforcement.
Blanche is expected to be questioned about the fund when he testifies Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the Justice Department budget. The department said it did not identify specific individuals who could benefit, and it said there were no “partisan requirements” for applicants. The department also said applicants could seek payouts and an apology, and it said a five-member commission appointed by Blanche would oversee the fund.
Democrats criticized the settlement as the kind of arrangement they said would be hard to review and would open the door to claims of political persecution. Nearly 100 Democrats in the House signed onto a legal brief urging a judge to block what they described as an unprecedented resolution. One of the signatories, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington President Donald Sherman, said in a statement, “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”
House Judiciary Committee top Democrat Jamie Raskin described the deal as a financial diversion, saying it was “nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists.” In a separate account of the same dispute, Trump’s attorneys had suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the case that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge, while the lawmakers’ brief laid out a challenge to that position.
At the White House Monday afternoon, Trump was asked whether people who committed violence on Jan. 6, 2021, should receive compensation from the fund. Trump responded that it would be “dependent on a committee,” and he added, “I didn’t do this deal. It was told to me yesterday.” He said the fund was dedicated to “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”
The settlement follows Trump’s lawsuit filed in Florida earlier this year that alleged that a previous leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused reputational harm and unfairly tarnished his business. Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump also joined the suit. The filing related to that leak comes after an IRS contractor, Charles Edward Littlejohn, was sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison following his guilty plea in connection with leaking tax information about Trump and others between 2018 and 2020.
In an early sign that a resolution was underway, Trump’s lawyers asked a judge last month for a 90-day pause while the two sides worked toward a settlement. On Monday, the judge handling the case, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, dismissed the case and admonished government agencies, including the Justice Department, for allegedly not being transparent about the settlement. Williams said in her filing that no agency “submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”
Williams had previously assigned attorneys to evaluate whether there was a conflict in the case because, as sitting president, Trump was suing entities whose decisions were subject to his direction. The lawyers group, the reporting said, raised concerns about whether the Justice Department was properly insulated from the president’s control of the case, setting the stage for continuing disputes over how, and whether, the settlement and the fund it created can be challenged through the courts.