President Donald Trump will drop his highly controversial $1.8 billion weaponization fund, which was created by settling his lawsuit against the IRS with his own Justice Department, according to Axios’s Marc Caputo.

“It’s dead for now,” an administration source told Caputo in the report.

“The president believes government was weaponized against people — it wasn’t just him. But this isn’t the time and vehicle for it,” a second source told Axios.

Trump’s DOJ released a press release last month declaring the fund was created “to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” and “will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants.” Critics quickly denounced the fund as a “slush fund” for Trump allies.

Former Vice President Mike Pence condemned the fund over the weekend on Meet the Press and urged the president to scrap it.

“Let’s get rid of this fund,” Pence said. “I mean, it’s deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6th. And I think that’s broadly held by most Republicans and most Americans.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke to Trump at the White House on Monday about the fund amid growing outcry in Congress, which has roiled the GOP. Many Republican senators, from MAGA-allied Ron Johnson (R-WI) to Trump critic Thom Tillis (R-NC), have spoken out against the fund in stark terms.

“I think it’s stupid on stilts,” Tillis said of the fund in late May, adding. “It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayers dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned and now we are going to pay them for that. That’s absurd.”

Last Friday, U.S. District ​Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the Trump DOJ not to set up the fund amid the ongoing legal battle around it.

The DOJ posted to social media soon after Caputo’s report that it would abide the court decision to temporarily block the fund, “The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”

This is a developing story and has been updated.

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