A watchdog group expressed skepticism on Tuesday that the Trump administration would truly kill a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government, even though the Justice Department has promised to drop the extraordinary plan.
Because of its doubts, the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, doubled down on its request to a federal judge to issue a formal order stopping the fund from being set up.
The move by the group, which is often known as CREW, came one day before Judge Richard J. Leon was set to hold a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington to consider whether to put its operations on hold. Another federal judge, in Alexandria, Va., has already issued an order temporarily freezing the fund and is set to hold her own hearing on Friday about whether to keep that ruling in place.
The fate of the fund has become a political flashpoint for the White House and continues to stir controversy both in the courts and in Congress. That, in large part, is because of concerns that it could be used to make payouts to the rioters who attacked the police during the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Last week, the Senate, after an all-night session, rejected efforts to kill the fund, as lawmakers voted on a bill to finance Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging immigration crackdown. Two members of the House — one Republican and one Democrat — are seeking to use a special measure known as a discharge petition to force a separate vote on the fund.
All of this has come despite repeated efforts by senior leaders at the Justice Department to tamp down the furor over the fund, which emerged as part of an agreement to settle a $10 billion lawsuit that Mr. Trump had filed against the Internal Revenue Service, accusing the agency of not doing enough to stop a contractor from leaking his tax information in 2019.
On Friday, the department, in court papers, assured Judge Leon and his colleague in Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema, that the administration would not move forward with the fund. In their filings, department lawyers pointed to statements that Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, made last week to a House subcommittee, vowing to drop the plan.
Mr. Blanche offered no such assurances about an arguably more extraordinary part of the settlement agreement — one that benefited Mr. Trump by granting him, his family and his businesses broad protections from I.R.S. investigations.
Lawyers for CREW were clearly not persuaded by either Mr. Blanche’s remarks or the department’s written assurances, telling Judge Leon that the administration had a track record of being deceitful in its handling of Mr. Trump’s lawsuit.
“There is ample reason to be skeptical of defendants’ representations,” the lawyers wrote. “Through their sham settlement of Trump v. I.R.S. and unlawful creation of the fund, defendants conducted what may be the single most corrupt act of self-dealing by any administration in American history.”
CREW’s lawyers reminded Judge Leon that the deal establishing the fund explicitly stated that its terms could only be modified by a “written agreement” between administration lawyers and Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers. No such agreement has ever been made public, they said.
Moreover, the lawyers said, Mr. Trump himself has seemingly walked back the idea of killing the fund, saying that he still loved the idea and believed it was important.
On the day Mr. Trump made those remarks, lawyers for CREW contacted the Justice Department, asking officials to formally withdraw the underlying agreement establishing the fund — a document that Mr. Blanche had signed personally.
“Counsel for CREW asked that defendants rescind the fund’s charter documents in writing and provide assurances that the fund will cease all operations,” the lawyers wrote.
Department lawyers refused to do so, they said.
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