The Trump administration said Monday it is creating a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the Republican president’s prosecuted allies after he left the his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
The “Anti-Gun Fund” was announced by the Department of Justice as part of a settlement agreement for the President of Donald Trump the case for leaking his tax returns.
Democrats and government watchdogs immediately vowed to fight what they called a “corrupt” and unprecedented resolution, warning that the deal would unfairly enrich those close to the president with taxpayer dollars and open the door to baseless claims of political persecution.
Trump’s lawyers revealed the dismissal of the case in a filing Monday in federal court in Florida, where the president sued earlier this year. The filing did not disclose the terms of any resolution, but ABC News first reported last week that Trump was prepared to drop his lawsuit as part of a deal that would create a $1.7 billion fund to pay allies of the president who believe they were mistreated by the Biden administration’s Justice Department.
If established, the fund would represent not only a highly unorthodox resolution, but also a further demonstration of the administration’s willingness to reward allies who, before Trump came to power, had been investigated and in some cases charged and convicted. Most importantly, the president on his first day back in office pardoned or commuted the sentences of supporters who revolted in
US Capitol on January 6, 2021. His Justice Department has since approved payments to supporters involved in the Trump-Russia investigation and investigated and prosecuted some of his perceived opponents.
“This case is nothing more than a racket designed to siphon $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at the DOJ to distribute to his private militia of insurgents, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2014, and attacked him. The scheme,” he said in a statement. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Trump’s lawyers suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the case that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge. But a group of 93 members of Congress filed a brief raising a challenge.
Trump has long made ‘weaponization’ claims
It was not immediately clear who exactly will benefit from the reported fund, but its creation reflects Trump’s longstanding claims that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was weaponized against him.
He has cited as evidence since-dropped criminal charges he faced between his first and second terms for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost and for keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Several of his aides were also prosecuted, as were hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the January 6, 2021 election results.
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Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization and said his decisions followed facts, evidence and the law. His Justice Department also investigated Biden over his handling of classified information and levied separate tax and weapons penalties against Biden’s son, Hunter.
However, Trump’s current Justice Department has actively pursued the president’s impeachment campaign and complaints, bringing criminal charges against some of his political opponents and launching a wide-ranging investigation aimed at establishing a long-running conspiracy between law enforcement and intelligence officials to destroy Trump’s political prospects and keep him in power.
No charges have been filed in that investigation, and it’s unclear what ever will be.
Trump’s lawsuit followed the leak of tax returns
Trump filed a lawsuit earlier this year in a Florida federal court, alleging that an earlier leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnishes their business reputations, portrays them in a false light, and adversely affects President Trump and the public of other plaintiffs.”
Sons of the president, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are also named as plaintiffs in the suit.
In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security technology firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about Trump and others to two media outlets between 2018 and 2020.
The media outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the description and timeline are consistent with stories about Trump’s tax returns in The New York Times and reporting on the taxes of wealthy Americans by the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. A 2020 New York Times report found that Trump paid $750 in federal income tax the year he first entered the White House and no income tax for several years, thanks to colossal reported losses.
In the first sign that a deal was coming, the president’s lawyers asked a federal judge last month to put the case on hold for 90 days while the two sides work to reach a settlement or settlement.
“This limited adjournment will neither prejudice the parties nor delay final resolution,” the April filing said. “Rather, the extension will promote judicial economy and allow the parties to explore avenues that may narrow or resolve cases efficiently.”
When asked in February how he would handle any potential harm from the case, Trump said, “I think what we’re going to do is do something for charity.”
“We can make it a significant amount,” he said at the time. “Nobody would care because it’s going to a lot of really good charities.”
A group of lawyers wrote to the court this month, expressing concerns about whether the Justice Department was properly insulated from the president’s control of the case. In addition, several ethics watchdog groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs opposing the president’s lawsuit.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group that filed an earlier brief, said in response to the impeachment: “This case was always a scam and another scam by the President to access taxpayer funds to line his own pockets.”
Perryman vowed her group will continue to fight for the settlement.
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