The Anti-Weaponization Fund

With Todd Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General to be heard this week, I though it might be a good time to review Trump’s attempt to create an “anti-weaponization” slush fund for his allies (including pardoned January 6th Participants), which was engineered by Blanche.

This will be a two-part post, because there is too much detail here to stuff into one post. Regardless, it will be difficult to discuss this effort without overwhelming the reader with arcane legal minutiae, but we’re going to do our best. Let’s start by reviewing the time-line of how this all came about.

• 2018-2020: Charles Edward Littlejohn, an IRS contractor, surreptitiously acquires approximately 15 years of Trump’s unmasked tax returns and leaks them to the New York Times and ProPublica. The leaks occur entirely during Trump’s first term, when his own appointees control the Treasury and the IRS.
• September 2020: The New York Times begins publishing a series of articles based on the leaked returns, revealing that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and paid no income taxes at all in ten of the previous fifteen years.
• October 12, 2023 : Littlejohn pleads guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information and is subsequently sentenced to five years in federal prison on January 29, 2024.
• January 29, 2026: Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization file suit in U.S. District Court against the IRS and the Treasury Department, seeking at least $10 billion in damages under 26 U.S.C. § 7431, the Internal Revenue Code’s civil damages provision for unauthorized disclosure of tax return information. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. 
• April 9, 2026: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appoints Trent McCotter (a Federalist Society-connected appellate lawyer from the Boyden Gray firm) as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, just six weeks before the settlement announcement.
• April 2026: Judge Williams appoints three independent law firms as friends of the court, recognizing that no genuinely adverse party exists to protect the public interest, given that Trump controls both sides of the litigation.
• Late April/Early May 2026: White House and DOJ officials begin privately exploring settlement options. 
• May 2026: Judge Williams denies a request to delay the case amid settlement talks. In the same order, she raises the threshold question of whether Trump and the defendant agencies are “sufficiently adverse” for an Article III case or controversy to exist
• May 18, 2026 — Morning: Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization file a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit “with prejudice” (meaning that it cannot be filed again). Critically, the settlement agreement is deliberately never docketed with the court.
• May 18, 2026 — Morning: The DOJ simultaneously announces the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The fund is to be drawn from the federal Judgment Fund (a permanent congressional appropriation normally used to pay court-ordered tort judgments and settlements) without seeking new congressional authorization. The number $1.776 billion (evoking 1776, a date explicitly invoked by January 6 participants) is stated in DOJ documents not to represent the value of Trump’s claims but rather “the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.”
• May 18, 2026: It emerges that the settlement agreement was signed on behalf of the United States not by a government lawyer but by Stanley Woodward (a private criminal defense attorney who has represented Kash Patel, Peter Navarro, Walt Nauta, and numerous January 6 defendants) raising immediate questions about his authority to legally bind the United States.
• May 18, 2026: A second, amended document (this time signed by Blanche himself) is released, containing a provision that the United States “releases, waives, acquits, and forever discharges” Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and “related or affiliated individuals” from any and all claims the IRS could have asserted against them. (Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer, resigns in protest.)
• May 18, 2026: Judge Williams issues a brief order stating she has been “stripped of jurisdiction” because the settlement was never docketed, leaving her “no settlement of record” to review or supervise.

That’s the chronological narrative that we’re dealing with. The legal problems with this scenario are equally numerous:

1. Statute of Limitations: suit is supposed to be filed within two years of when the damage was done, and that was back in December of 2020 (or at the very latest in January 29, 2024, when Littlejohn was sentenced). Trump filed his suit within exactly two years of sentencing but clearly he knew long before that.
2. The Adverseness problem: since Trump is both the plaintiff and the defendant there is no “case or controversy” or controversy within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution. Trump could have sued while Biden was President, but he didn’t do that.
3. The Statutory Damages: The suit was brought under an IRS privacy statute (6 U.S.C. § 7431) for which the statutory punishment is $1000 per violation. Since we’re talking 15 years and four plaintiffs, (Trump, Don Jr., Eric, and the Trump organization) we’d be looking at $60,000. 
4. The Contractor Problem: Charles Edward Littlejohn was a contractor, not a federal employee, and the Department of Justice had previously taken the position that the government cannot be held liable under §7431 for the actions of a contractor.
5. The Control Problem: The leak occurred entirely during Trump’s first term, when his own appointees controlled Treasury and the IRS. If anyone was negligent in their supervision, it was Trump’s own people.
6. The Fund-Creation Problem: The Trump Administration had no authority to create a separate fund or to use the federal Judgment Fund (31 U.S.C. § 1304) from which to pay a settlement related to a civil tax complaint.
7. The Fund-Administration Problem: The Fund is to be administered by a commission appointed by the Attorney General, with the president able to remove any member without cause. The commission operates with no public transparency, no oversight mechanism, and no process for public input. This is not how commissions normally operate.
8. The Potential Recipients: The potential recipients of the Anti-Weaponization Fund  have no relationship to the original complainants (which only included Trump, Don Jr., Eric and the Trump organization) and have only been vaguely identified. So far those would be (1) individuals prosecuted or investigated in matters connected to Trump-era investigations, (2) persons involved in the January 6 cases and (3) others alleging politically motivated treatment by federal agencies or prosecutors. One should note that there are thousands of potential claimants for the tax privacy violations, but none of them have been included as recipients for payouts.
9. The Fund-Termination Problem: The fund terminates December 15, 2028 (just after the next presidential election) with any unspent money reverting to an account of Trump’s choosing.
10. The 14th Amendment Problem: Under the 14th Amendment insurrection debt clause (which prohibits the United States paying “any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion”) it can be argued that January 6th participants are essentially being paid for participating in an insurrection, especially without very detailed guardrails imposed on the Anti-Weaponization Commission for deciding whether someone had a valid claim. 
11. The Fund Amount is Untethered to Any Damages: There is no actuarial calculation that informs the $1.776 billion figure. The figure is entirely symbolic and references “1776” (which the January 6th insurrectionists invoked for their rebellion) and could just as easily have been $1.776 million. Now, 1,583 people were arrested and charged federally in connection with January 6th; 1,270 of those people were convicted of some offense; of those, 1,009 plead guilty, 221 were found guilty at trial and 40 were convicted through stipulated proceedings.If all 1270 people who plead guilty were paid the full amount in the fund, they would each be entitled to an average of $1.398 million in compensation.
12. The Pardon Problem: President Trump has the power to pardon his sons and the Trump Corporation (and maybe even himself) of any criminal tax-fraud offenses. (The Trump Corp. has already been convicted of state-law tax fraud offenses in New York, which is not reviewable.) Here Trump is trying to extend a kind of virtual pardon power to himself and his family in civil cases by essentially making himself and his family judgment proof. (it’s doubtful that Trump’s could bind future iterations of the DOJ under future administrations, but they can certainly throw some sand into the machine.)

Here we have identified an even dozen legal problems, any of which by themselves could collapse what Trump is trying to do. If Obama had done any one of these things, Republicans would likely have been apoplectic about this behavior. Together they represent a kind of legal malpractice on the part of the Department of Justice in which it breached its duty to the citizens of this nation, acting on both sides of the dispute, and would have caused us (the taxpayers) $1.776 billion in damages if they had succeeded.