The Department of Justice of the United States announced on Monday that it will launch a fund of nearly $1.8 billion (actually, 1.776 to match the founding year of the country, whose 250th anniversary is being celebrated now) to compensate or rather reward some of President Donald Trump's allies who claim to have been mistreated and persecuted by Democratic administrations. This includes potentially the Capitol rioters in January 2021. The decision comes as a result of an agreement with the president and his family, who will withdraw their $10 billion lawsuit against the Treasury and two other lawsuits related to possible Russian interference.
This is completely unprecedented and comes weeks after Trump fired the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, for not aggressively pursuing his political enemies or handling the Epstein case as he believes should be done.
The most politicized Department in history has named it the Anti-Weaponization Fund to "provide a systematic process to listen to and address the claims of those who have suffered legal abuses and judicial manipulation." This has deeply irritated the judge overseeing the case, who has now summoned both parties to provide explanations, as she believes, for obvious reasons, that Trump's private lawyers and 'his' public lawyers in Justice may have acted jointly to achieve what the president wanted without judicial oversight.
Minutes after Trump's lawyers informed the judge of their intention to withdraw the lawsuit, 93 Democratic lawmakers filed a complaint accusing the Department of Justice of "conspiring" and asked the judge to dismiss the case and prevent the creation of the fund. "Never in the history of the United States has a sitting president requested a monetary agreement from the government he leads, let alone requested billions of dollars from public funds," the congressmen have declared.
It all started with a lawsuit by the president and his sons Donald Jr and Eric and the Trump Organization against the Department of the Treasury and the IRS (the tax collection service) in the federal court of the Southern District of Florida after the leak of their tax returns from the past. The person responsible for that, a man named Charles Littlejohn, who also leaked confidential tax records of other billionaires, was arrested, pleaded guilty, and in 2024 was sentenced to five years in prison in a case the judge described as "the biggest theft in IRS history."
Nevertheless, Trump was seeking unprecedented compensations. According to the agreement, the plaintiffs will receive a "formal apology but no monetary compensation or indemnification of any kind" in exchange for the creation of this fund.
"Government machinery should never be used as a weapon against any American citizen, and the intention of this Department is to rectify past mistakes and ensure that this does not happen again," stated Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who until the last elections was one of the president's main personal lawyers. "As part of this agreement, we are establishing a legal process for victims of legislative instrumentalization to be heard and obtain redress," he celebrated.
"No administration should tolerate the use of governmental power to attack individuals or entities for improper and illegal political, personal, or ideological reasons," added Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter in a statement. After the Department did everything in its power to pressure or punish the president's political enemies, from fired prosecutors who are being investigated to former FBI director James Comey, or former National Security Advisor James Bolton, who are being prosecuted or have been visited by federal agents at their homes for searches. Not to mention the members of the Federal Reserve.
In 2019, The New York Times and ProPublica gained access to the family's tax returns. Trump has been talking for months about this type of operation without any shame, joking in public appearances about how difficult it would be to decide how much money he was going to "pay himself" to settle disputes against the government he now leads. Just as he has reached agreements with almost all technology companies, who have agreed to pay him tens of millions of dollars for the construction of his future presidential library/hotel in exchange for settling lawsuits they had in court after Trump sued them for closing their accounts on social media.
The announcement indicates that the Fund would be composed of five members appointed by the Attorney General and that one member will be chosen in consultation with Congressional leaders. But just like with his controversial and so far ineffective Peace Board, where Trump has all the power to appoint and remove members and manage millions of dollars diverted by his own government, it specifies that "the president can dismiss any member, but their replacement must be chosen in the same way as the replaced member."
If the Fund goes ahead, it will have "the power to issue formal apologies and grant economic compensations to claimants. Filing a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim," the document states, opening the door to result in payments to Trump allies and anyone who claims to have been victims of a justice system "weaponized" under President Joe Biden, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, most of whom were pardoned by Trump shortly after taking office.
Trump's team points out in their announcement that there is a legal precedent for such a fund, the well-known "Keepseagle" case, where the Obama Administration created a $760 million fund to address various claims of institutional racism. "In the Keepseagle case, hundreds of millions of dollars remaining in the fund were distributed to non-profit organizations and NGOs that never filed claims, while any remaining money in the Anti-Weaponization Fund will return to the federal government," the Department of Justice says.