Judge pauses action on Trump's $1.8B fund amid suits

A federal judge in Virginia temporarily barred the Trump administration from taking steps to operate the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization fund" while she weighs a longer-term block amid a growing number of legal challenges.

Although the proposed fund is still in an early phase, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote on Friday that she was issuing the order for now "to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed." The Justice Department hasn't yet announced the selection of the five-person panel to manage disbursement.

The case in Virginia is one of at least four lawsuits filed objecting to the plan since it was announced earlier this month. The fund was created as part of an agreement to resolve President Donald Trump's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the past leak of his tax information. Opponents have denounced the arrangement as a "slush fund" to benefit the president's allies and supporters. 

Brinkema set a hearing for June 12 to consider the request filed Thursday to stop officials from operating the fund while the litigation is pending. The Treasury Department is set to transfer the full amount of the fund — $1.776 billion — in mid-July, according to a memo from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Challengers in the Virginia case include a former federal prosecutor who pursued charges against people accused of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol as some Trump supporters sought to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. Trump, who lost to Biden, granted pardons or clemency to the more than 1,500 people charged or convicted in the attack, and they are expected to be among those likely to benefit from the fund.

"This administration is gifting the people I helped investigate and prosecute after January 6 access to an illegally-created remedial process with minimal structure or oversight, so that this administration can rush money out the door to perceived political allies, while treating me and people like me as disfavored enemies," Andrew Floyd, the former assistant US attorney, wrote in a declaration filed in court.

Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents Floyd and the other plaintiffs in Virginia, said in a statement that Brinkema's order "recognized the urgent need to prevent taxpayer dollars from being distributed through a secretive and unprecedented political compensation scheme before the legality of that program can be fully reviewed by the court."

In another lawsuit, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning government watchdog organization, filed a request Thursday for an immediate temporary order preventing US officials from making the fund operational. A federal judge in Washington handling that case hasn't set a schedule yet.

The other pending legal challenges include a case brought by two current and former law enforcement officers who were part of the response to the Jan. 6 riots and a new complaint filed this week by Allison Gill, the host of the Mueller, She Wrote podcast. Gill is a former US Department of Veterans Affairs employee who emerged as a prominent Trump critic. 

Trump sued the IRS in January, represented by private attorneys. A federal judge in south Florida was in the midst of probing the validity of the case, because Trump appeared to control both sides, when his lawyers withdrew it. The Justice Department publicly announced the settlement, which also included a bar on investigating Trump's past tax returns, but didn't formally submit the agreement terms to the judge.

A group of former federal judges has asked the Florida judge to reopen the proceedings to investigate whether the agreement was the result of "a fraud on the court."

The cases are Floyd v. Department of Justice, 26-cv-1399, US District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria); Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Department of Justice, 26-cv-1789, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington); Dunn v. Bessent, 26-cv-1719, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington); and Gill v. Department of Justice, 26-cv-3283, US District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego).