Critics, including lawmakers from both parties, called the money a “slush fund” for the president’s political allies.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) – In a setback for the Trump administration, a federal judge on Friday an indefinitely extended block in a planned anti-gun fund of nearly $1.8 billion, intended to distribute payments to those targeted by the federal government.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema signaled that she would consider declaring the case against the administration moot if Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, along with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, signed a statement under penalty of perjury that the fund would not move forward “in any manner and under any name.”
Brinkema gave officials a week to file an affidavit confirming that no payments had been made under the fund and that the fund would not be revived.
Blanche told Congress in May that the government would not proceed with plans for the fund. The administration argued in a hearing Friday that given the announcement, the issue is moot.
Brinkema — who had previously issued a temporary freeze on the funds — asked U.S. Justice Department Attorney Andrew Block why the administration had not rescinded the order creating the fund.
When Block said he didn’t know, Brinkema said, “there’s a big gap in the record” without an answer to that question.
President Donald Trump — who has referred to Bill Clinton appointee Brinkema as a “radical leftist” judge — has said he really wanted the fund. And when the president of the United States says he wants something, Brinkema observed, “that’s a pretty good indicator that there’s going to be an incentive and motivation to make it happen.”
of suit is being led by a coalition of organizations and individuals—notably including Andrew Floyd, a former assistant United States attorney who led a task force that prosecuted individuals involved in the January 6 uprising.
The groups charge that the administration has “weaponized the extraordinary power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it.”
After Friday’s hearing, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, said the court “recognizes the serious legal concerns raised by the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to create a secret, taxpayer-funded compensation program that operates outside constitutional guarantees governing public spending.”
“Despite the administration’s varying explanations for the future of the slush fund, the court’s order ensures that taxpayer dollars cannot be diverted through this illegal scheme while the courts fully consider the serious constitutional issues at stake,” Perryman added.
The fund was widely criticized on both sides of the aisle as a “slush fund” for Trump’s political allies, with concerns that it opened a path for people convicted of violent crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol to seek financial restitution.
The fund was allegedly part of a settlement of a lawsuit Trump filed against his administration alleging that disclosure of his tax return information by a former government contractor entitled him to $10 billion in damages.
In the settlement, the president and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit were granted a waiver that permanently shields them from audits and prosecution. The DOJ also announced the creation of a $1.776 billion anti-weapons fund.
The slush fund money would come from the Judgment Fund, reserved money under the US Treasury for “final judgments entered by a district court,” as well as “compromises to settle claims referred to the attorney general for the defense of pending litigation or actions against the United States.”
In discussing the use of that money, Brinkema read from an amicus brief filed by a pair of senators, Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana:
“To deliberately appropriate public funds, in violation of the Constitution and laws of this nation, to compensate these perpetrators, is to use the machinery of democratic government to subsidize an attack on the most basic processes of that government. Congress itself, as the victim and sole appropriating authority of the federal government, has a compelling interest that does not turn public funds into the return of an institutional interest to it,” the senators wrote.
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