DOJ attorney says in court filing that 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' is 'not going forward'
Following a week of controversy surrounding the Trump administration's "Anti-Weaponization Fund," a Department of Justice attorney said in a court filing Friday that the fund is not moving forward.
In a court filing on Friday, a DOJ attorney argued that one of the lawsuits challenging the controversial fund is moot because the fund has "not been set up and is now not going forward."
The $1.776 billion fund, announced last month, was established by the Justice Department to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration.
It was created in exchange for President Donald Trump agreeing to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS as well as two civil claims for $230 million related to the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term in office and the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate -- sparking accusations of self-dealing and a bipartisan uproar over the possible use of taxpayer money to compensate allies, including rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the filing, Andrew Block -- a senior counsel to the associate attorney general -- urged a federal judge to deny a motion for an injunction blocking the fund because there are no longer grounds for a lawsuit.
"The equities and the public interest do not favor this Court interjecting itself in a political process to shut down a Fund that is already not going forward. As noted above, the Fund has been the subject of vigorous public debate. That process may seem messy. But the push-and-pull of such debate is a feature of our constitutional republic," Block wrote.
Earlier this week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House Appropriations subcommittee that the Department of Justice is not "moving forward with the fund" though he declined to put that commitment into writing.
The next day, President Donald Trump told reporters that he was not sure if the fund was dead and that he still believed that Jan. 6 rioters should be compensated.
In a lawsuit brought by a coalition of plaintiffs -- which prompted a judge last week to issue a temporary order preventing money from being transferred into the fund -- Block argued there was no need for the judge to order any additional relief. He also argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring a case and that the lawsuit cannot move forward because there is no "controversy" required to bring a legal action.
"By nevertheless accepting Plaintiffs' baseless standing theories and meritless claims, the Court would effectively unwind a preferable political resolution. All in service of Plaintiffs who are classic ideological objectors rather than genuinely injured parties. That would undermine, rather than promote, 'the core values of American democracy' that Plaintiffs purport to be defending," the filing said.
The "anti-weaponization fund" has been the target of at least four different federal lawsuits seeking to halt its creation.
