WASHINGTON — The Trump administration signaled Monday it is backing off on creating a $1.8 billion fund announced by the Justice Department that could send money to allies of President Donald Trump deemed to be “victims of lawfare and weaponization.”
It comes after a fierce and rare backlash from Senate Republicans, who threatened to team up with Democrats to block the fund. About half the Republican conference appeared ready to vote with Democrats to restrict or kill it, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last week.
In a statement, the Justice Department cited a federal judge’s ruling Friday that blocked the fund on a temporary basis, saying it “disagrees strongly” but “will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
The judge had issued an order that only temporarily blocked the Justice Department from taking any further action on the fund until the court more fully assesses both parties’ arguments; it did not permanently block the fund. A hearing had been set for June 12.
Asked whether it was abandoning the fund, the White House pointed to DOJ’s statement.
Trump, in a phone conversation with ABC News Monday, said, “We are subject to the courts. At this moment, that’s what it is.”
“If a court doesn’t allow it, and right now a court has it held up, what can you do?” Trump said.
A Jan. 6 prosecutor who was fired by the Trump administration, and others, sued last month to challenge the fund in the Eastern District of Virginia. The head of the group that filed that suit — Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — said Monday that it would be a “major victory” if the Trump administration was “abandoning its illegal slush fund” but that the plaintiffs would continue challenging it for the time being.
“Until the administration fully abandons the scheme, it’s beyond dispute that it will not recur, and our clients’ harm is remedied, we will be in court challenging it,” she said. “We look forward to the government’s response to the courts and to our filings, and to prevailing on behalf of our clients.”
The announcement is aimed at restarting the party-line “reconciliation” bill Republicans are trying to push through Congress to fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term in office. Those two agencies were left out of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill this year. That push stalled two weeks ago before the Memorial Day recess because of the “anti-weaponization” fund.
Early indications Monday afternoon were that the administration’s statement on the court ruling was insufficient to unlock a path for the party-line bill, with a top Republican who regularly aligns with Trump saying he needs more.
“The only thing that’s going to solve this problem, to get immigration funded and law enforced, is for the president to do away with the weaponization fund,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair of the Judiciary Committee that oversees DOJ, said.
Asked if the DOJ statement was enough, Grassley said: “The answer is no.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said the weaponization fund “was a nonstarter from the get-go.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill have threatened to go all out to shut down the fund and force their GOP colleagues to go on-record about the idea. They plan to do so through amendments in the reconciliation bill and potentially by forcing votes on stand-alone legislation to prevent the administration from reviving it later.
And they are not convinced by the administration’s suggestion that it will backtrack on pursuing the fund.
“If Trump and Republicans are truly abandoning this corrupt scheme, they should have zero problem banning it in law,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on X. “This week, Senate Democrats will push legislation to ban this slush fund and ensure no president can ever do this again. Trump’s word is nowhere near enough.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not directly say Monday whether Republicans would support a stand-alone bill to shut down the weaponization fund.
“I don’t know, but I do think that the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Thune said.
Asked whether the administration needs to be clear that it won’t try to bring back the fund, Thune replied: “That would be the ideal outcome. But I don’t know what they’re gonna say.”
Democrats have threatened to force votes on amendments to block the money. And numerous Republicans ripped into it at a private meeting May 21 with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to Cruz, who said that he supports the fund but that the White House would have “a full-on revolt in the Senate” if it stayed the course.
“My guess is there’re probably 45 senators in the room, at least half of them were blasting the attorney general, and they were pissed,” Cruz said on his podcast “Verdict” the next day. “There were multiple senators yelling at the attorney general, saying this feels like self-dealing.”
There was a “jailbreak of Republicans who were bolting, who were saying we’re going to vote with the Democrats and basically kill reconciliation because of this judgment fund,” he added.
Republicans control a 53-47 majority in the Senate and an even narrower 217-212 margin in the House. Numerous Republicans have openly criticized the $1.8 billion fund.
At least three other suits had been filed over the lawsuit: two in Washington, D.C., and another in the Southern District of California. One of the D.C. lawsuits was filed by two officers who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6.
A federal judge in Florida who had overseen Trump’s $10 billion IRS lawsuit, which led to the out-of-court settlement between the administration and Trump’s private attorneys that established the fund, had separately asked for further briefing after 35 retired federal judges wrote that the settlement was a product of “collusion” and “fraud on the Court.”
The Justice Department was supposed to name five commissioners — all of whom Trump could have fired at whim — within 30 days of the settlement that established the fund on May 18, but it never made any announcements about the commissioners.
Schumer took to the floor Monday to warn that the fund, as proposed, could funnel taxpayer money to “MAGA billionaires, cop-beating Jan. 6 insurrectionists and [Trump’s] own family.”
“Trump is claiming that the slush fund is dead for now. But Democrats will not stop until it’s well and truly buried and can never see the light of day,” he said. “Republicans can try to wriggle their way out of answering for this corruption. If Republicans try to force through their reconciliation bill again, the first amendment I will offer will be to ban the slush fund permanently and forever.”
