Judge Orders Trump Admin to Swear $1.8 Billion Slush Fund 'Is Not Happening'

A federal judge may have dealt the final blow to President Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "weaponization fund" on Friday, indefinitely blocking it and ordering his administration to state unequivocally that it's no longer happening.

In the face of bipartisan backlash, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had publicly backed off plans to use the money earlier this month, and a court temporarily blocked the transfer of the money to what opponents had dubbed a "slush fund" for Trump's supporters, including January 6 rioters who claim to be victims of government "weaponization" by the Biden administration.

But The Atlantic reported on Thursday that even as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) publicly swears that the payouts are dead, administration officials have been reassuring Trump's cronies behind the scenes that they'll get their checks and that the administration simply needs to wait for the legal blowback to die down or find an alternative way to award them the money, which was set to follow a DOJ-brokered settlement between Trump and his own Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

That may prove more difficult after Friday, however, when US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction indefinitely extending her previous two-week pause on the fund.

She described the arrangement, to have taxpayer funds disbursed without court rulings to “an extremely small group” that many Americans feel engaged in “unacceptable” conduct, as "problematic."

The DOJ had attempted to have the case against the fund dismissed, arguing that it was now a moot point, since Blanche had publicly declared it dead. But Brinkema said, "The [government’s] mootness argument, in my view, doesn’t go anywhere.”

While the DOJ stated that the fund has “not been set up and is now not going forward," Brinkema noted that Blanche had declined to state that under oath, while Trump has publicly continued to champion the fund even as his administration has backed away from it.

During the hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia, Brinkema pressed DOJ lawyer Andrew Block on why, if the fund was truly defunct, the administration had not formally rescinded the order setting it up. He said he didn't know.

The judge gave Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose department would have overseen the fund, one week to sign a “clear, unambiguous” declaration stating under penalty of perjury that the fund is dead, and wrote in the order that they must affirm that it "will not proceed in any manner, or under any name."

She said in order for the lawsuit to be thrown out, the government needed to put it in writing because "we don’t have the kind of absolute certainty that this fund wouldn’t rear its head."

Outside the courtroom, Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward—the watchdog group that sued the DOJ—celebrated that the court had "put the brakes on Donald Trump's slush fund."

The group is representing several plaintiffs who say they'd be harmed if the fund were to be enacted.

They include a former federal prosecutor fired after leading January 6 cases; the city of New Haven, Connecticut, which has been targeted by the administration over its sanctuary policies; the National Abortion Federation, which says the fund could reward anti-abortion activists convicted of clinic-related offenses; and the watchdog group Common Cause, which argues that the opaque scheme could embolden January 6 defendants.

"We were thrilled that the judge understood the significant harm that our clients face as a result of the fund, as well as the American people," said Democracy Forward senior counsel Pooja Boisture. "We were thrilled that she got it right. She understood that this was not a partisan issue."

It remains unclear whether the order would stop the administration from pursuing other methods for rewarding Trump's allies. Reuters reported on Friday that his legal allies have discussed dusting off a 1946 law called the Federal Tort Claims Act, which would allow individuals to file administrative claims and lawsuits that could be settled out of court with a lot of flexibility for the government.

“The Trump administration cannot be trusted with the public’s money,” said Omar Noureldin, Common Cause’s senior vice president for policy and litigation. "We’ve successfully locked the president’s personal slush fund for now, and we’ll keep the pressure on until it’s shut down for good.”