WASHINGTON—The Trump administration has retreated from its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” under pressure from Republican lawmakers, but the Justice Department is now signaling it will use an existing federal law to compensate allies who say the government targeted them for political reasons.
The fund, created May 18 as part of a settlement in which President Trump dropped a lawsuit against his own government over an IRS leak, drew immediate bipartisan criticism. Republican lawmakers threatened to sink an unrelated immigration-enforcement bill unless the administration backed off, effectively sealing the fund’s demise.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers June 2 that the Justice Department would not move forward with the fund, according to people familiar with the matter. Blanche did not commit to putting that decision in writing, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trump declined June 3 to declare the fund dead, saying he still “loved the idea.”
Even without the dedicated fund, department officials have emphasized in recent days that they retain authority—and an uncapped source of money—to settle lawsuits against the federal government. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a now-deleted social-media post responding to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) that “we’re on it” regarding the suggestion to use existing law to compensate people who claim they were harmed.
The primary legal vehicle under consideration is the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 law that allows individuals to sue the federal government for damages caused by wrongful government actions or negligence resulting in personal injury or property damage. Last Friday, as the fund appeared doomed, nine pardoned Jan. 6 defendants filed a lawsuit under the act alleging their prosecutions stemmed from selective enforcement based on their support for Trump and were “orchestrated by people at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI.”
One of the plaintiffs, Treniss Evans, said some Jan. 6 defendants might have accepted smaller sums through the scrapped fund. “Now we’re playing hardball,” he said.
Mark McCloskey, a Missouri-based lawyer who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, said he dropped off boxes with the Justice Department in December containing administrative claims for nearly 400 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack. Under the act, claims can go to federal court if a government agency denies them or does not issue a decision within six months, meaning those claims could soon become ripe for litigation.
Longtime Trump ally and former policy adviser Michael Caputo, who had submitted the first claim for compensation from the scrapped fund—a request for $2.7 million—said the fight is just beginning. “This game just got started, and this is just strike one,” Caputo said.
The Justice Department has already used the tort-claims framework to settle similar cases. In March, the department agreed to pay $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, resolving claims that Flynn was the victim of a politicized prosecution. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before Trump’s first inauguration, later sought to withdraw the plea, and was pardoned by Trump in 2020. The department also reached a settlement with Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser who alleged the Justice Department abused its foreign-intelligence surveillance authorities.
Claims have also come from people who say they were mistreated by the Trump administration, including Columbia University campus protester Mahmoud Khalil and a Venezuelan man sent to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador. Both are planning further legal steps, their legal teams said.
The Federal Tort Claims Act has produced significant payouts in recent years for groups alleging FBI failures. Survivors and families of 16 of the 17 people killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting secured $127.5 million in 2021. In 2024, the U.S. government agreed to pay $100 million to approximately 100 gymnasts sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar after the abuse was reported to the FBI.
Legal experts said the new wave of “weaponization” lawsuits may follow a different path because the administration has shown sympathy to the claimants. “The plaintiffs’ lawyers in the cases are pushing on an open door,” said Anthony Sebok, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law. “The Justice Department, like any competent defense firm, should be playing hardball, forcing plaintiffs to fight every step of the way to settlement.”