Justice Department Refuses Judge’s Request for Sworn Statement on Fund

The Trump administration on Friday declined to give a federal judge a sworn statement that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund is permanently abandoned, calling the request unnecessary and arguing that it raises “serious separation of powers concerns,” CBS News reported. In a notice to the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, senior Justice Department lawyers rejected a request from Judge Leonie Brinkema for declarations from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.

The fund, officially $1.776 billion, was announced May 18 as part of a settlement of President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax records by a contractor, CNBC reported. The department said it would provide a process to redress claims of people who suffered “weaponization and lawfare,” which the settlement framed as prosecutorial overreach during the Biden administration, according to CBS and CNBC. Critics in both parties objected, in part because payouts could have gone to people who pleaded guilty to crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. CBS reported that the backlash from congressional Republicans threatened to derail the GOP’s immigration agenda.

Blanche told a House committee on June 2 that the department was “not moving forward with the fund,” but he declined to put that in writing. Brinkema, who had already issued a preliminary injunction blocking the department from creating or operating the program, said last week that those statements were not made under penalty of perjury and that Trump’s comment afterward that he wanted to move forward with the fund raised doubts. She gave the officials a week to file sworn declarations that the program would not proceed “in any manner, or under any name,” and warned that otherwise the lawsuit seeking a permanent bar would continue.

Andrew Block, senior counsel to Woodward, answered Friday that Blanche had testified to Congress that the fund is “not going forward, period,” and that department lawyers had twice signed court briefs and said so twice in open court, all “against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity,” CNBC reported. He wrote that the court’s presumption that a case can become moot only through compelled testimony from three senior officials implicates separation of powers concerns. The Justice Department said in a post on X that the judge’s demand was an attempt to require her to sign off on future settlements separate from the “non-existent Fund,” adding that “judges do not get to insert themselves into the department’s routine settlement authority,” CNBC reported.

The department also argues in court papers in two challenges that the program was never set up and is not going forward, so the cases are moot, CBS reported. Government lawyers said none of the five members who would have run the fund had been appointed. That position has not persuaded every judge to dismiss: Brinkema’s case includes a former federal prosecutor who worked on Jan. 6 cases and the city of New Haven, Connecticut, among the plaintiffs, and other challenges are pending in Washington and California. In one Washington case, Judge Richard Leon declined to issue a temporary order but warned a department lawyer, “Don’t play possum with this court,” CNBC reported.

Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement quoted by CBS that officials “continue to refuse to say under oath that the Slush Fund is dead and won’t operate in the future.” It was unclear Friday whether the filing would be enough for Brinkema to allow the case to be dismissed, CBS reported, and her injunction remains in place.