A federal judge said at a hearing Friday that she was concerned that the Trump administration could find ways to effectively revive a defunct $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that critics say would have rewarded the president’s supporters.
The Justice Department has asked U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema to dismiss an ongoing lawsuit challenging the fund. The administration in the spring said the fund would provide payouts to those wronged by the justice system. But it was quickly challenged in court as an unconstitutional rewards program for hundreds of people who accepted pardons from President Donald Trump after being convicted of blocking access to abortion clinics or participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Brinkema, who sits in Alexandria, Virginia, previously issued an injunction blocking the fund, and she signaled at Friday’s hearing that she was not ready to end the case. The judge said that she was troubled by “this concept of taxpayer money being used to promote particular political viewpoints.”
A Justice Department lawyer, Andrew Block, argued that the lawsuit was moot because Attorney General Todd Blanche unequivocally announced the fund’s termination last month in a written order and in sworn congressional testimony before his Senate confirmation. “The Anti-Weaponization Fund is not happening,” Block said. “It’s not moving forward.”
Pooja Boisture, an attorney for the Democracy Forward Foundation, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case, said Blanche’s statements were “in the present tense” and left the door open to reviving the fund in the future. “The real concern is that the day this injunction is lifted, defendants will move forward with the fund,” she said.
Brinkema said she would issue a written ruling at a later date on the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the lawsuit, but she signaled that at least some parts of the suit could be allowed to proceed because some issues in the case were “alive and kicking,” even after Blanche disavowed the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
“That entity is gone — but is there a functional equivalent going on right now?” the judge said.
She noted that the Thomas More Society, which represents dozens of people who were pardoned by Trump after having been convicted of violating a law against blocking access to abortion clinics, had pending claims seeking monetary compensation from the government.
Dozens of former Jan. 6 defendants have filed similar claims in U.S. District Court in D.C., seeking compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act, Brinkema said. Although the Justice Department is currently opposing those Jan. 6 payout claims in court, the administration could change course and approve the payments, the judge said.
The judge said the lawsuit over the fund raises serious questions about potential violations of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from discriminating based on political viewpoints, and the equal-protection clause in the Constitution.
Brinkema said it was unfortunate that administration officials have contradicted in public statements what Blanche set down in writing. “They contradict themselves all the time,” she said. “Actions speak louder than words.”
Trump has continued to muse about using taxpayer dollars to reward people who he says were unfairly prosecuted by Democratic administrations. Blanche, at a news conference on Aug. 12, after he terminated the fund in writing, said, “The president feels very strongly, as do I, that there were people who were victims of a Department of Justice that was absolutely weaponized, and he feels very strongly that he would want to make them whole, as do I.”
“But it will not be through the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which, again, was never set up, and nothing has happened with it,” Blanche added.
A federal magistrate judge who is overseeing the legal discovery process in the case, in which attorneys share evidence to prepare for trial, previously ruled that the Justice Department had to identify the people who came up with the way the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was structured. Block asked Brinkema to overturn that order.
“Why do you need to know?” the judge asked Boisture. “What is the relevance of understanding who was involved?”
Brinkema noted that the Justice Department had already identified Blanche and acting deputy attorney general Trent McCotter as officials who worked on the fund plans. Other legal filings show that Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and IRS chief executive Frank Bisignano also were involved.
The plan for the fund was part of a deal the administration reached with Trump to drop a $10 billion lawsuit he had filed against the IRS over the 2019 leak of his confidential tax records. In exchange, his administration agreed to establish a $1.776 billion fund that would give officials broad authority to distribute payments.
When Boisture said the plaintiffs needed to know whom to call for depositions in the case, Brinkema said ordering depositions of high-ranking officials posed a “sensitive” issue for the court. The judge did not issue a ruling on the request to overturn that part of the magistrate judge’s order.
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