A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from further advancing a $1.776 billion fund created under the banner of combating the “weaponization” of government power.
The disputed plan called for an unprecedented mechanism to make payments to people who say they were wrongfully targeted by the government.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, ordered on Friday that the Department of Justice refrain from taking any further action related to the fund, including transferring money into it.
Brinkema’s order also bars the Justice Department from reviewing claims submitted to the fund or distributing any money from it. The order says this is necessary “to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund” while the litigation continues.
The lawsuit against the administration was brought by former assistant U.S. attorney and January 6 prosecutor Andrew Floyd, along with other plaintiffs. They are seeking to block a mechanism they describe as a “shadow fund” that is “on a collision course with the U.S. Constitution.”
“This is a victory for transparency, the rule of law and the American people,” said Skye Perryman, whose organization, Democracy Forward, filed the lawsuit.
“No administration has the authority to spend public money through a political rewards program that Congress never approved,” Perryman added.
The Justice Department announced the creation of the fund as part of a settlement in Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department over the leak of his tax returns.
The five members of the commission that will decide who receives payments from the fund will be chosen personally by the attorney general.
As Axios’s Andrew Pantazi writes, those decisions cannot be appealed or challenged in court, and there is no requirement for public disclosure of who received a payment or how much they received.
The lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia is one of several legal challenges to the Trump administration’s fund.
On Wednesday, a coalition of 35 former federal judges urged the judge who handled Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to reopen the case and examine whether the unusual settlement that ended it may have amounted to fraud.