‘Outright theft’: legal experts decry $1.8bn Trump anti-weaponization fund

A pro-Trump mob storms the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP View image in fullscreen A pro-Trump mob storms the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP ‘Outright theft’: legal experts decry $1.8bn Trump anti-weaponization fund Critics from both sides and legal scholars say ‘slush fund’ is scheme that will help January 6 rioters A legal and political firestorm is growing over the $1.776bn “anti-weaponization” fund Donald Trump ’s justice department has launched to pay alleged victims of “lawfare”, but that ex-DoJ officials and legal experts call “corrupt” and a “slush fund” for Maga allies that benefits the president. Congressional critics from both parties and legal scholars have attacked the fund as an opaque scheme that will improperly help January 6 insurrectionists, some of whom said they intend to apply for grants, while echoing Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden’s administration was “weaponized” against them. Moreover, since the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, unveiled the fund on 18 May to settle a $10bn lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS over a leak of his tax returns in 2019, critics have blasted a fund “addendum” that blocks IRS action on any pending tax probes of Trump, his sons and their businesses. Legal challenges to the fund and its addendum have been growing. A bipartisan group of 35 ex-federal judges on 27 May filed a motion appealing to a federal judge in Miami who oversaw Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to reopen the case, and launch an inquiry to determine if Trump and DoJ’s unorthodox deal to settle the lawsuit involved fraud. The jurists’ charge that the settlement fund’s creation was a “fraud on the court”. In an extraordinary turnaround on 29 May, the Miami judge reopened Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to explore whether the court had been deceived by the parties involved including DoJ, and the deal was “premised on deception”. Separately, responding to a lawsuit filed by a former January 6 prosecutor who DoJ fired, plus other individuals and entities who say they have faced Trump administration attacks, a Virginia federal judge ruled on 29 May temporarily blocking further moves to set up the fund and fund dispersals until at least a hearing on 12 June. No fund payments have been made yet since it’s still being organized. The slush fund’s organization also faces fire from critics worried about its lack of transparency and the ultimate authority it gives Trump to fire “without cause” any of its five-member board who will decide about payments. Blanche is slated to appoint the board members, one of whom will be named in consultation with Congress. The DoJ announced on Monday that it would “abide by” the Friday court ruling that temporarily blocked the fund from moving forward. Also on Monday, as the fund faced mounting criticism and pressures from the courts and political leaders in both parties, including Senate majority leader John Thune, Axios reported that the fund