“Although Acting Attorney General Blanche reiterated several times during his testimony that the fund was not going forward, when asked whether he would ‘issue a new memo in writing rescinding that May 18 memo,’ he replied, ‘I’m not committing to putting anything in writing. And I said it over and over again,’” Brinkema noted.
A federal judge will permit a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to proceed in court.
According to CNBC, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that she would have been willing to dismiss the lawsuit if the federal Department of Justice had provided a “short, written declaration under the penalty of perjury” that the fund is actually dead and won’t be resurrected by the Trump administration at some later point.
In her order, Brinkema noted that acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has repeatedly refused to rescind the May 18 memo establishing the fund’s structure and purpose. Furthermore, neither Blanche nor Trump appear to have abandoned the plan in its entirety. Earlier this month, for instance, Trump signaled to journalists that he still feels an anti-weaponization fund would be “great.”
The proposed fund would provide compensation to persons allegedly subject to political “persecution” by the Biden administration. This definition would likely cover many January 6 rioters, including those convicted of vandalizing the U.S. Capitol and physically assaulting federal law enforcement.
Blanche, adds CNBC, created the fund after the Internal Revenue Service agreed to settle a lawsuit filed against the agency by President Trump. In court filings, Trump claimed that the IRS failed to protect his tax records, allowing a whistleblower to leak certain documents to the press.
The case raised concerns among legal watchdogs, who emphasized that Trump was, in effect, demanding a large, taxpayer-funded settlement from an agency over which he exerts significant control.
Earlier this week, the Justice Department asked Brinkema to dismiss the lawsuit outright, saying that written declarations are “unnecessary.” Government lawyers also claimed that the judge’s request that Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put their promises on paper “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”
But on Thursday, Brinkema found that “the defendants have refused to accord a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their representations about the Fund not going forward,” something that is “particularly concerning because of the President’s consistent support for the Fund and Acting Attorney General Blanche’s acknowledgement that the Fund remains ‘important.’”
“Although Acting Attorney General Blanche reiterated several times during his testimony that the fund was not going forward, when asked whether he would ‘issue a new memo in writing rescinding that May 18 memo,’ he replied, ‘I’m not committing to putting anything in writing. And I said it over and over again,’” Brinkema noted.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who said that he was fired for prosecuting cases against Trump supporters involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The other plaintiffs are California State University-Channel Islands Professor Jonathon Caravello and the City of New Haven, Connecticut.
Sources
Judge says lawsuit against Trump DOJ ‘anti-weaponization’ fund will proceed
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