A federal judge in Virginia on Friday indefinitely barred President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund from moving forward and said she would give administration officials one week to provide a written guarantee that it is dead.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she was not convinced by the Justice Department’s assertions that the fund — which was designed to compensate people who claimed to have been unfairly targeted by federal authorities — would not proceed.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified to Congress this month that the administration would scrap the fund following uproar from lawmakers over the money potentially being used to compensate people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But Blanche declined to say as much in writing, and Trump continued to publicly defend the fund.