LAST UPDATE | 2 Jun
THE US JUSTICE Department has said it will abide by a court order temporarily freezing a $1.8 billion compensation package that critics have denounced as a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s political allies.
The move comes amid US media reports that the Trump administration plans to scrap plans for the fund, which has come in for fierce criticism by Democrats and even some members of Trump’s Republican Party.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema barred the administration last week from taking any further action to create or operate the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” ahead of a 12 June court hearing.
In a statement on X, the Justice Department said it “disagrees strongly” with Brinkema’s decision but “will abide by the court’s ruling”.
The fund was “established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people,” the department said, and is “open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise”.
According to Axios and other US news outlets, the Trump administration plans to drop the fund.
“It’s dead for now,” Axios quoted a source as saying.
The fund was created by the Justice Department as part of an extraordinary settlement of Trump’s civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor.
The administration says it is intended to compensate people who suffered from government “weaponization” and “lawfare” — Trump’s terms for what he says was the politically motivated targeting of conservatives and his supporters.
But opponents say the fund has no clear legal basis, little public oversight and could be used to reward loyalists, including defendants convicted of crimes related to the 6 January 2021 assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
Trump, on his first day back in office last year, pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of attacking Congress in an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Brinkema’s order came after a lawsuit by a group of plaintiffs who argued that the fund amounted to a “collusive agreement” between Trump and his administration, with “no basis in law, and no accountability”.
The fund has become politically toxic even among some Republicans.
Senate Republican leaders recently postponed a vote on a major bill funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol partly because of concerns that the fund could allow 6 January defendants to receive taxpayer money.
The lawsuit before Brinkema is one of several legal challenges seeking to stop the fund, including cases brought by law enforcement officers who clashed with rioters and by government oversight groups.