U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton appointee serving on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, has temporarily halted all activity related to President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.
The Fund is intended to compensate people who were allegedly targeted by politically motivated government actions, prosecutions, investigations, or other forms of “lawfare” or “government weaponization.” The fund was created as part of a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.
It would provide a process for individuals to submit claims and seek compensation if they believe they were unfairly targeted by the federal government.
Critics argue that the fund would primarily benefit Trump allies, including some January 6 defendants, anti-abortion activists, and others prosecuted during previous administrations. They have raised concerns about transparency, congressional authorization, and the broad discretion given to the commission that would administer the fund.
At any rate, the plaintiffs have filed a request for an expedited briefing and hearing schedule for a Temporary Restraining Order. Judge Brinkema denied this motion on Thursday.
Before the Court is plaintiffs’ Expedited Motion for Briefing Schedule (“Expedited Motion”), which requests an expedited briefing and hearing schedule for its pending Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, Or in the Alternative, a Preliminary Injunction with Expedited Briefing and for a Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705 (“Motion”. See generally, [Dkt. No. 30]. Defendants oppose this Motion, requesting additional time to respond. See id, at 3-4. Because full briefing of the issue will enhance the ability of the Court to make a sound decision, plaintiffs’ Expedited Motion, [Dkt. No. 30], is DENIED and defendants’ request for additional time is GRANTED.
The judge granted the defendants’ (the Department of Justice) request for additional time to respond. However, the defendants are barred from making any transactions in the Fund until the legal challenges have been resolved.
The ruling states:
However, to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund (hereinafter, “Fund”) while plaintiffs’ Motion is pending, it is hereby ORDERED that defendants be and are ENJOINED from taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which includes the transferring of money to the Fund; the consideration of any claims submitted to the Fund; and the disbursing of any funds from the Fund.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for June 12.
You may recall that, last week, intense disagreement among lawmakers over this fund torpedoed efforts to pass the Senate Republicans’ immigration enforcement funding package, a roughly $70 billion measure to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the remainder of Trump’s term. Senate GOP leaders had hoped to pass it before the Memorial Day recess and send it to the House.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
In a court filing Thursday, the challengers said the government’s lawyer had told them that, as of now, “no money has been transferred to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, no claims have been paid, and no formal process has been set up to accept claims for adjudication.”
But the challengers said the government wasn’t able “to provide assurances of how long that status quo would last.”
The chief executive of Democracy Forward, the legal team that brought the challenge, welcomed the order on Friday. “Today, a federal court recognized the urgent need to prevent taxpayer dollars from being distributed through a secretive and unprecedented political compensation scheme before the legality of that program can be fully reviewed by the court,” said Skye Perryman.
At least three other lawsuits have also been brought against the fund, in other federal courts. Soon after Brinkema issued her order, Judge Richard Leon in the District of Columbia said he would hold a hearing on June 10 in a challenge brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
For now, the Anti-Weaponization Fund remains little more than a proposal on paper. According to government lawyers, no money has been transferred, no claims have been processed, and no compensation has been paid. Whether the fund ultimately becomes a vehicle for compensating victims of government misconduct, as its supporters hope, or an unlawful political payout scheme, as its critics allege, will likely be decided in the courts. With multiple lawsuits advancing in federal jurisdictions and hearings scheduled in the coming weeks, the legal battle over Trump’s controversial initiative is only just beginning.
"…to ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed"
New: A federal judge in Virginia has temporarily barred the Trump administration from acting on claims for payouts from the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” while she weighs a longer-term block; hearing set for 6/12… pic.twitter.com/70NyLtlDIv
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) May 29, 2026
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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Comments
https://x.com/rduke0071/status/2060415045754933610
Who is ‘Andrew Floyd” and how does he have any standing to challenge a settlement between Trump and the IRS?
We all know how rich this is. The Democrats hand out $$ to their militias all the time. Before they’re arrested, after they’re arrested, after someone is dead. blah blah blah.
Can’t believe Trump’s people couldn’t find a way to do this without leaving an open door for these frauds to file suit. I hope they all die penurious.
Seems to me that there would have been an equal, if not greater, gnashing of teeth on the Left if he had taken a cash settlement and then used the cash he gained to set up this fund, administered privately. They would have pissed and moaned, but might have had a hard time finding a judge willing to step into a settlement another judge had signed off on. Then again, anything Trump does or doesn’t do is considered fair game by a significant number of our black robed masters.
The challenges to the fund and its purpose is a roundabout way of acknowledging that many of DJT’s supporters and associates were, in fact, the victims of legal processes corrupted by politics.
We now have learned to anticipate these lawfare challenges as predictable events.
Let’s go after the funds paid to the rioters of the left. A special tax clause. 100%. 1040 form, somewhere in Line 1 to Line 11a.
The GOP can do this.
When is Trump gonna man up and start defying these judges? She made her ruling now let her enforce it
Predictable.
Every leftist criminal being prosecuted by the Trump administration is now claimed to be “a victim of malicious prosecution.”
Meanwhile, Trump is not allowed to recompense actual victims of malicious Democrat prosecution.
What? Have you missed all the payouts to the left’s storm troopers? They have already been paying them handsomely.
just get some poc to say they are to be the recipients and it will be back on!
I didn’t think someone has standing to stop the federal government from settling a lawsuit with an individual?
No, it didn’t. It didn’t recognize anything except the mere fact that a challenge has been filed, the administration opposed an expedited hearing, so obviously the status quo has to be preserved until after the hearing comes up in due course. There’s nothing in the judge’s order that even implies illegality.
“ secretive and unprecedented political compensation scheme”
Ah yes, the old secret that everyone knows about trick.
Those are not the judge’s words, they’re the plaintiff’s. The allegation is that this is a “secretive and unprecedented political compensation scheme”. The judge gave no indication that she agrees with it.
And “secretive” is not a synonym for “secret”. They’re two different words, with different meanings. We don’t know whether the panel, when it’s eventually established, will be secretive; it might be, but that’s not in evidence.
Has a Commassar Judge ever stopped the looting of the treasury by a Marxist yet?
“The Fund is intended to compensate people who were allegedly targeted by politically motivated government actions, prosecutions, investigations, or other forms of “lawfare” or “government weaponization.””
“Critics argue that the fund would primarily benefit Trump allies, including some January 6 defendants, anti-abortion activists, and others prosecuted during previous administrations.”
Sure sounds like they are admitting that previous administrations weaponized the DoJ against their ideological opponents
Who is the IDIOT who proposed this before the midterms?