Last week, Republican senators grilled Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created by President Donald Trump’s settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS.

About 45 senators attended the meeting, and “at least half of them were blasting the attorney general,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reported.

“They were pissed.”

It’s not hard to see why.

The lawsuit that provided the pretext for using taxpayer money to compensate purported victims of “lawfare and weaponization” was legally dubious, the fund has nothing to do with Trump’s claims against the IRS — and the main beneficiaries are apt to be the president’s allies and supporters.

The lawsuit pitted Trump against agencies he oversees, represented by government lawyers who are forbidden, under an executive order that Trump issued in February 2025, to “advance an interpretation of the law” that “contravenes” the president’s position.

That bizarre situation prompted the federal judge overseeing the case to question whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed.

The lawsuit was provoked by IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn’s illegal leaking of Trump’s tax returns.

But Trump filed his complaint too late: more than two years after Littlejohn pleaded guilty to what Trump’s personal attorney accurately called “an egregious breach.”

According to Trump’s May 18 settlement agreement with the IRS, Littlejohn’s leaks, which included confidential information about thousands of wealthy Americans, epitomized Democrats’ use of government power to “target individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons.”

Although that’s a counterintuitive way to describe the conduct of a rogue contractor who was prosecuted by the Biden administration, it’s the only attempt to justify the Anti-Weaponization Fund as a logical result of Trump’s litigation.

It’s highly unusual for the Justice Department to settle a lawsuit by agreeing to pay people whose grievances are completely unrelated to the plaintiff’s claims, which in this case involved the IRS’ allegedly lax oversight of its contractors.

Such settlements, in fact, are prohibited by a rule that the Justice Department issued during Trump’s first term.

That rule, which then-Attorney General Pam Bondi reaffirmed in February 2025, generally prohibits settlement payments to “a non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute.”

There are a few limited exceptions, none of which seem to apply in this case.

Trump’s settlement agreement arbitrarily assigns $1.776 billion to the Anti-Weaponization Fund — a reference to the nation’s founding year that the agreement preposterously claims is “based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.”

The five members of the board charged with doling out that money will be appointed by the attorney general and can be removed by the president “without cause” at any time.

Although the Justice Department says “there are no partisan requirements to file a claim,” it seems clear the process will favor Trump’s friends.

The board, the composition of which is completely subject to Trump’s control, will “cease processing claims” a month and a half before he leaves office, and the settlement agreement describes “lawfare and weaponization” as abuses peculiar to Democrats.

“I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!” Trump explained on Truth Social Friday.

Those “others” presumably include the 1,600 or so Trump supporters who were arrested (and later pardoned by Trump) for participating in the 2021 Capitol riot.

The prospect that the fund “could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer” is “absurd,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) remarked last week. 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) likewise said “a slush fund to pay people who assault cops” was “utterly stupid” and “morally wrong.”

“I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” Trump acknowledged a few days after suing the IRS.

The upshot of his admitted self-dealing is an arrangement so brazenly corrupt that even Republicans are having trouble accepting it.  

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.