(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The proposed $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund is no more.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed in remarks to the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the Department of Justice is walking away from the initiative.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche told lawmakers in a tense hearing, later adding: “The reasons for the fund, I think, remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund.”
Blanche said the fund was a priority for President Donald Trump, who was himself indicted by the Biden administration shortly after leaving the White House in 2021.
Blanche’s remarks mark the latest sign that the DOJ has abandoned the effort entirely.
The fund was first announced in a May 18 press release after Trump settled a civil lawsuit against the IRS over the agency’s failure to prevent the leak of his confidential tax-return information to the legacy media.
His comments also followed two federal court rulings tied to the settlement.
First, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton appointee, on May 29 issued a temporary restraining order blocking the fund after a lawsuit filed by a former federal prosecutor who claimed he was fired for his role in the aggressive targeting of Jan. 6 defendants.
Separately, U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams of Florida also on May 29 revived Trump’s case against the IRS after a group of former judges urged her to do so in an amicus brief.
Williams ordered the DOJ and Trump’s attorneys to respond by June 12 to questions about the settlement, which was entered outside her court.
At the center of the revived case is the claim that Trump and the DOJ may have misled the court, though no evidence has been produced to support that allegation.
