Justice Department abandons Trump anti-weaponization fund after backlash

The Justice Department has abandoned the centerpiece of a Trump settlement that would have created a nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, a striking retreat that exposed how quickly congressional pressure can scramble the administration’s legal agenda.

“We are not moving forward with the fund. Period,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House lawmakers during testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. Blanche’s declaration marked a public walk-back of a fund the department had announced only two weeks earlier as part of a settlement involving Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization.

The fund had been billed as a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a vehicle the administration said would allow claims from people who believed they had been harmed by government “weaponization” and “lawfare.” The settlement grew out of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, a dispute that had already drawn intense scrutiny in Washington and Florida.

Blanche’s reversal followed unusually sharp resistance from both parties on Capitol Hill. Senate Republicans objected so strongly that they threatened to block unrelated Trump priorities, including legislation tied to funding immigration enforcement agencies. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would move to permanently block the fund and stop similar efforts in the future. The controversy became so combustible that a rare GOP revolt threatened to turn a Trump-backed Justice Department initiative into a broader legislative problem for the White House.

A federal judge in the Southern District of Florida, Kathleen Williams, reopened the Trump-IRS case on May 30 to examine the settlement that created the fund, adding legal pressure to the political backlash. Blanche’s comments suggested the department was trying to preserve the rest of the agreement while shelving its most controversial piece. The fight over the fund underscored the degree to which the Justice Department’s public messaging, legal priorities and political risk calculations had collided in real time.

By Monday, the department had already taken a partial step back. Blanche’s testimony made the retreat explicit: the fund was no longer moving forward, even as the rest of the settlement remained in place.