A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s administration from funding or making any payments from a nearly $1.8 billion compensation fund for his allies.
Friday’s order from Judge Leonie M. Brinkema blocks the administration from “taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund” — including transferring money to it, considering any claims, and mailing any checks while a legal challenge plays out.
The order follows a lawsuit filed by former federal prosecutor Andrew Floyd, among others, who accused the administration of launching an illegal scheme to reward Trump’s political allies while excluding others harmed by government abuse, including his perceived enemies and critics targeted in his own political retribution campaign.
Following an agreement between the president and the IRS after he sued his own administration for $10 billion, alleged “victims” of government “weaponization” can file for a piece of a $1.776 billion compensation fund, while the president, his family and their businesses escape government scrutiny for tax debts over which they have been under investigation for more than a decade.
Several lawsuits were filed to block the transfer of millions of taxpayer dollars into the fund.
Floyd’s lawsuit argues that the fund was created under a “collusive agreement between the president and his own administration” and “has no congressional authorization, no basis in law, and no accountability.”
The career prosecutor alleges he was fired in June 2025 in retaliation for supervising the prosecution of members of the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — a history that the Trump administration has sought to rewrite with the erasure of hundreds of convictions.
Those former defendants are now lining up for potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer dollars from the fund.
“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, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing plaintiffs in the case.
“This is a victory for transparency, the rule of law, and the American people,” she said in a statement shared with The Independent. “No administration has the authority to spend public money through a political rewards program that Congress never authorized. We look forward to the next stages in this case.”
Other plaintiffs joining Floyd in his lawsuit include Cal State University Channel Islands professor John Caravello, who was arrested during protest against Trump’s mass deportation arrests, and the entire city of New Haven, Connecticut, which “has been targeted by the administration through retaliatory civil litigation and threatened funding terminations,” according to the lawsuit.
“None of these individuals or entities can make a claim for monetary payment, or even for an apology, from the Anti-Weaponization Fund,” lawyers wrote.
A five-member board made up of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s appointees will arrange payments from the fund to recipients whose identities will remain secret. Blanche has publicly stated that Trump and his family are not eligible, but Blanche has not ruled out payments to the president’s donors and allies, raising questions about the process and who stands to benefit.
The Department of Justice is tapping into the long-standing Judgment Fund to settle any claims brought, an arrangement that critics have called a “slush fund” for his supporters.
The scheme has come under heavy fire in Congress, where lawmakers abruptly abandoned a series of votes before Memorial Day after hitting an impasse over the administration’s fund.
Trump fumed on Truth Social that he “gave up a lot of money” to create the fund, despite previously saying he would donate whatever he received from his IRS lawsuit to charity organizations.
“I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!” Trump wrote May 22.
Days earlier, he said he wasn’t involved in the settlement.
“I guess they made a settlement of some kind. I wasn’t involved in the settlement, I could have been involved, but I didn’t choose to be, so they made a settlement,” he told reporters.
Trump said the victims of “weaponization” under the Obama and Biden administrations — an apparent reference to his allies who were investigated in connection with his 2016 and 2020 campaigns and the attack on the Capitol — were “destroyed, they went to jail, their families were ruined, they committed suicide.”
“We’re reimbursing those people for their legal fees and for their costs, and for anybody involved,” he said. “It was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen in politics.”
