'Anti-Weaponization Fund' still being challenged despite DOJ's vows to kill it

Two judges are holding hearings this week about whether to block the fund.

Two federal judges are set to hold separate hearings this week on the Trump administration's scuttled $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," despite vows from the Department of Justice that the controversial plan is "not going forward."

With President Donald Trump continuing to defend the fund and calling for those charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack to be compensated, attorneys for a watchdog organization as well as a coalition of plaintiffs have asked federal judges to issue orders formally blocking the creation of the compensation fund.

"If it was up to me, I'd pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed," Trump said during an interview with NBC's Meet the Press that aired over the weekend.

The legal challenges to the fund are set to ramp up on Wednesday when a federal judge considers a request from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to issue an injunction blocking the fund. The nonpartisan organization has argued that despite the Trump administration's assurances, the charter documents creating the fund remain "in full force and effect."

"So long as the Fund's charter documents remain in effect, nothing stops Defendants from illegally siphoning, at any given moment, nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Treasury's Judgment Fund to an unidentified 'Designated Account' and rapidly disbursing those funds to whomever they want under a shroud of secrecy, in violation of the Constitution and multiple federal transparency and funding statutes," lawyers for CREW wrote in a court filing last Thursday.

Lawyers for CREW have highlighted Trump's statements -- including his claim that Jan. 6 defendants "should be reimbursed for a crooked government" -- to argue that the Department of Justice may not abandon the fund.

"There is ample reason to be skeptical of Defendants' representations. Through their sham settlement of Trump v. IRS and unlawful creation of the Fund, Defendants conducted what may be the single most corrupt act of self-dealing by any administration in American history," they argued.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice have argued that the case is now moot, writing in a court filing that they would not move forward with the fund.

"The equities and the public interest do not favor this Court interjecting itself in a political process to shut down a Fund that never got off the ground and is not going forward," DOJ attorneys wrote.

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