Washington — The Trump administration on Friday refused to provide a court declaration from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent affirming that the government has abandoned a contentious $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, arguing that the judge’s requested filing was “unnecessary.”
In a notice filed in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, senior Justice Department attorneys pushed back on U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s call for a sworn statement from Blanche, Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.
Brinkema said last week that, “to avoid any further litigation,” the officials should submit a declaration under penalty of perjury stating that the “anti-weaponization” initiative would not move ahead “in any manner, or under any name.” She also issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Justice Department from taking steps to establish or run the program, and that order remains in effect.
The judge cautioned that if the administration chose not to submit the declaration, the lawsuit filed by a coalition including two nonprofit groups and a former federal prosecutor would continue.
Andrew Block, senior counsel to Woodward, wrote in the notice that the requested declaration is “unnecessary” and that forcing testimony from high-ranking Executive Branch officials raises “serious separation of powers concerns.”
Block pointed out that Blanche had already told Congress the fund is “not going forward, period,” and said the Justice Department has made comparable statements in its court submissions.
“Accordingly, the Court’s demands are unnecessary,” Block wrote. “And its presumption that mootness can arise only by compelling testimony from three senior government officials ‘implicate[s] separation of powers concerns.’ As stated multiple times, the Fund is not moving forward.”
It’s unclear whether Block’s arguments will be enough to persuade Brinkema to agree that the lawsuit should be dropped.
“It is telling that even after the federal court gave them a week, the Acting Attorney General and other senior administration officials continue to refuse to say under oath that the Slush Fund is dead and won’t operate in the future,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Nor have they provided any information under oath about their compliance with the court’s prior directives.”
Brinkema gave the Trump administration the chance to clarify the fund’s status following a hearing last week. Block argued before the court that the case should be dismissed because the administration hadn’t set up the fund and isn’t going ahead with it.
While the Justice Department made that assertion in court filings and to Congress during a hearing earlier this month, the judge noted none of those statements were made under penalty of perjury.
The “anti-weaponization” fund was created as part of a deal to settle a civil lawsuit President Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service in January over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor. The $1.776 billion program aimed to “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” the Justice Department said.
But the fund drew serious backlash from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who raised concerns with the possibility that people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol could receive payouts.
After the “anti-weaponization” program threatened to derail the GOP’s immigration agenda in Congress, Blanche told a House committee that the Justice Department was “not moving forward with the fund.” But he refused to put the commitment in writing, raising the possibility that the fund could be resurrected in another form.
The Justice Department also argued in court papers in two different legal challenges that the program “had not been set up and is now not going forward,” and said the cases are moot and should be dismissed in their entirety. Government lawyers argued that none of the five members who would establish and administer the fund had even been appointed.
But during the hearing before Brinkema last week, the judge expressed skepticism over the Justice Department’s assertion that the fund is dead.
The case before Brinkema was filed by a former prosecutor who worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 attack, as well as the city of New Haven, Connecticut, and two nonprofit groups, Common Cause and the National Abortion Federation.
Other challenges to the fund have been brought in Washington, D.C., and California. In one of the cases in Washington, involving a government watchdog group, a federal judge declined to temporarily halt operation of the fund.
