A federal judge has temporarily blocked Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund while another probes whether Trump’s lawyers defrauded the court.
The fund was created as a part of a settlement Trump made with the Internal Revenue Service after a now-incarcerated employee leaked his tax returns.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema made her ruling on Friday after one of the prosecutors involved in dealing with Jan. 6 cases and others sued to block the fund.
Brinkema noted that the order is in place to “ensure that no funds are irreversibly disbursed from the Anti-Weaponization Fund” while motions are pending to block the disbursement of money. A hearing is set for June 12.
Andrew Floyd, who led a task force in the Capitol Siege Section of the United States Attorney’s Office before he was terminated in July, filed a declaration in reference to the lawsuit. Floyd prosecuted cases related to the Capitol riot.
“[The Trump administration], Floyd said, “is gifting the people I helped investigate and prosecute after January 6,” access to a process that he called illegally created to “rush money out the door to perceived political allies, while treating me and people like me as disfavored enemies.”
Simultaneously, Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who oversaw the initial case, opened an inquiry that gives Trump’s lawyers until June 12 to answer allegations that they mislead the court to land the massive settlement against the IRS.
The request to re-open the case comes from a brief filed by 35 former federal judges who requested that the court reopen the case because of questions regarding manipulating the judicial process.
“The Court was deceived,” the brief reads.
“To be clear, [Trump’s] settlement was not, and never will be, legally justified. That is because the Acting Attorney General’s Order creating the Anti-Weaponization Fund identified the Judgment Fund and the Attorney General’s authority to enter ‘compromise settlements’…as the basis for the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Both of those authorities require the existence of a legitimate litigation and not, as here, one that is collusive, feigned, or fraudulent,” the brief continues.
The brief also noted that when Trump’s lawyers asked for the case to be dismissed due to the settlement, the settlement was never mentioned in the dismissal.
“Here, the [former judges] advance grievous allegations that Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed this litigation solely to avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit that ‘was collusive from the start,’ and was only filed to provide the imprimatur of legality for an unlawful settlement,” Williams wrote in her order.
