Judge warns Justice Department over Trump anti-weaponization fund plan

A federal judge put the Trump administration on notice over its new $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund, warning that the Justice Department could not tell one story in court while the president told another in public. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied an emergency request to halt the fund, but he said the department should not “play possum with this court.”

The dispute turns on whether the administration is quietly preserving a politically charged compensation program even as officials insist it is dead. On May 18, 2026, the Justice Department announced the Anti-Weaponization Fund as part of a settlement resolving Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The department said the money would come from the federal Judgment Fund and would create a “systematic process” for claims from people who say they were harmed by government “weaponization” or “lawfare.”

Under the agreement, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization would receive only a formal apology, not money. The deal also said the fund would be run by five members, with four appointed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and one chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. Any money left over would revert to the federal government, and the fund would stop processing claims no later than December 1, 2028. The department pointed to the Obama-era Keepseagle settlement as precedent for the structure.

Leon’s warning came after Blanche told Congress the fund was “not moving forward” and Justice Department lawyers used the same wording in court. Trump then undercut that position in a televised interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, saying he loved the idea and would pay victims “the kind of money that they deserve” if it were up to him. Leon said he was relying on the government’s filings for now, but he questioned why Blanche had not formally rescinded the May 18 order creating the program’s procedures.

The credibility problem now extends beyond one courtroom. Another federal judge, Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, had already temporarily blocked action on the fund in a separate case. Watchdog groups and Democrats have cast the arrangement as a taxpayer-funded slush fund for Trump allies, with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington arguing it likely implicated the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause and calling the deal “the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency.”