The rollout of the DOJ’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” may have been botched, but the fund remains a good idea, and the hysteria from Democrats like the hypocritical Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and allied media is absurd.
It’s not unprecedented or corrupt or Trump’s personal “slush fund,” no matter how loudly they shriek.
It’s just a rebranding of an existing legal settlement fund Congress authorized decades ago, as Washington lawyer and veteran Senate oversight investigator Jason Foster points out.
Administrations of both parties have repeatedly used the DOJ’s “Judgment Fund” to settle legal claims against the federal government, and Democrat administrations have used it for far more questionable payouts than the Trump administration’s proposal to compensate genuine victims of lawfare.
The Biden DOJ paid off FBI anti-Trump plotters Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe, for instance, along with numerous convicted criminals, who alleged bad treatment by the Bureau of Prisons.
By contrast, Trump allies and administration officials who suffered unjustly at the hands of Joe Biden’s weaponized FBI and DOJ, like Michael Caputo, Christina Bobb and Jeff Clark, are genuinely worthy victims who should be made whole.
Before the rebranding, retired Gen. Michael Flynn received $1.25 million from the DOJ Judgment Fundto settle his civil lawsuit over the “malicious” Russiagate prosecution.
“People are acting as if an authority to settle cases in whatever amounts that the government wants is somehow new,” says Foster, whose firm Empower Oversight represents whistleblowers who have sued government entities like the FBI and received settlements that include back pay, legal costs and often their jobs back.
Dishonest Dems
“The pre-existing Judgment Fund is a permanent, infinite appropriation that the Attorney General can use to settle any claim. DOJ can and has used it to pay damages resulting from lawfare/weaponization.
“It can continue doing so in whatever amounts it wants unless Congress repeals or amends 31 U.S.C. § 1304.”
In other words, the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is simply a subset of the DOJ’s existing unlimited Judgment Fund, and the $1.776 billion — get it?! — war chest the DOJ trumpeted is just a branding gimmick.
The DOJ clumsily gave an opening to a Democrat smear campaign when it tied the “anti-weaponization fund” to Donald Trump’s legal agreement with the IRSthat he would drop his $10 billion lawsuit over the IRS leak of his private tax information.
In reality, it has nothing to do with Trump’s settlement.
The fund exists independently, whatever its branding. Agreeing to dismiss his claim without receiving a penny himself was simply a generous gesture by the president to try to ensure that those who were wronged in his name are compensated for their legal fees, medical bills and other costs.
But Democrats have cynically twisted that generosity into bogus allegations of corruption.
Nobody has been more ferocious or disingenuous in his attacks on the anti-weaponization fund than Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Wyden’s Ep connection
Wyden accused Trump of setting up a “$1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence . . . It will be the most brazen theft of taxpayer dollars by any president in history.”
Wyden has been in the Senate for 30 years. He knows every word he said is inaccurate.
Yet he has demanded investigations, fired off spurious letters to the IRS, Treasury and the Treasury Inspector General and even worked with the godfather of lawfare, Norm Eisen, to persuade an Obama judge to reopen Trump’s settlement deal with the IRS that sparked the whole saga.
On Friday, Miami federal Judge Kathleen Williams reopened President Trump’s $10 billion case against the IRS in response to court papers filed by an activist group of former federal judges assembled by Eisen, who urged her to “investigate serious misconduct.” What’s she going to do? Force Trump to take the compensation?
As Wyden prepares to excoriate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over the fund in a Senate hearing this week, it’s worth pointing out that the slippery senator is the last person who should be throwing stones.
He poses as an accountability crusader but has escaped scrutiny for controversies closer to home — whether that home is in Oregon or New York, where he maintains a residence and his wife runs her business, is another question.
For instance, Wyden has spent months hammering Trump and the DOJ over their handling of the Epstein files, accusing them of trying to sweep evidence under the rug and alleging without evidence that he’s found a money trail that leads to Trump.
Yet he claims he knows nothing about his own family connection to Trump — an April 2016 appointment at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion between Wyden’s son Adam and the pervert financier.
mansion between Wyden’s son Adam and the pervert financier. Adam Wyden sought investment backing from Epstein using his father’s Senate positions and committee assignments as the lure, according to emails released by the DOJ as part of the Epstein files dump.
“I don’t speak to my kids about their business activities,” is all Sen. Wyden had to say when confronted by Fox News Digital.
Yeah, we’ve heard that before, from Wyden’s pal Joe Biden, about his grifter son Hunter.
Fishy finances
Then there is the Strand Building in Manhattan, the Wyden family’s prize possession, inherited by the senator’s wife, Nancy Bass Wyden. In 2018, voice-over coach Peter Rofé was accused of sexually abusing dozens of women over two decades in his studio, one floor above the Strand bookstore.
He was first arrested in 2004 for allegedly exposing himself in the building during a recording session, but remained a tenant of the Wyden family, while the alleged sexual abuse continued for years.
How did the Wydens miss the warning signs for so long?
Meanwhile, Wyden’s stock portfolio performs better than Nancy Pelosi’s miraculous Midas pot. He has the distinction of being the third-best stock performer in Congress, with access to special information.
In 2024, while he was chairman of the Finance Committee, Wyden’s portfolio grew more than 120%, far exceeding the S&P 500’s 25% gain that year.
Maybe he’s just lucky, but there’s more smoke in his financial arrangements than in the bogus scandal he’s been whipping up out of the DOJ anti-weaponization fund.
The post Miranda Devine: Dems can cry corruption all they want – the DOJ’s anti-weaponization fund has precedent and purpose appeared first on New York Post.
