Challengers to the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” asked a judge on Tuesday to let them seek evidence the Justice Department truly is abandoning the program. The filing came in response to arguments the Trump administration made in filings last week that the lawsuit is unnecessary because the fund “is now not going forward.” But the challengers argue the administration has been unclear about the fate of the fund, which the DOJ announced as part of settling a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump against his own administration following the leak of Trump’s tax returns during his first term. For example, in the same week acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the fund was “not going forward,” Trump himself said the fund was a “great idea, and so do many other Republicans,” the filing said. The government repeatedly cited unsworn statements from Blanche but has otherwise offered no evidence or explained how that position interacts with the settlement of the tax return lawsuit, the challengers told the judge. One DOJ official made “no commitments that the Fund will not be established or operated in the future,” the challengers wrote, and instead only confirmed that there were no activities taken to the fund as of June 8. The filing came after Republicans sent Trump a major reconciliation measure funding immigration enforcement, in part on assurances that the administration had abandoned the controversial fund. The lawsuit was brought by several individuals, Common Cause, the National Abortion Federation and the city of New Haven, Conn. They asked for evidence that the DOJ has affirmatively abandoned the fund, such as statements that the settlement no longer creates a binding obligation for its creation. The challengers and the administration are set to have a hearing over the fund Friday before Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Brinkema ordered a temporary pause on the fund as the challenge moves forward. “Given the rapidly approaching hearing on Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunctive relief, clarity about the government’s claimed dissolution of the Fund is essential and urgent,” the filing said.
