June 1, 2026
That $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund may not happen after all. The Trump administration basically said today it was backing off…for now. But that does not mean this is over. And honestly, this could still go either way. I’ll explain why in this video.
First, the Department of Justice released this short statement on its social media page this afternoon saying that the DOJ “disagrees strongly” with the federal judge in Virginia who, as I told you in this video on Friday, ruled that the Trump administration cannot do anything with this fund for the next two weeks. They can’t work on it, they can’t look at claims made by people who say they were politically prosecuted by the U.S. government, and they certainly cannot disperse one single cent from this fund until this judge takes a look. The statement ends by saying, “The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”
That’s the statement leading everyone to say the Trump administration is backing off. Now, obviously, it’s the law to abide by a judge’s ruling. That’s how our system works. But it is still something we don’t hear very often from the Trump Department of Justice, especially when a ruling doesn’t go their way. We usually hear the DOJ criticize the judge and say they will appeal. But they didn’t do that this time.
But as I mentioned, this could still go either way. That’s because while the DOJ says it will abide by the judge’s ruling today, that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. They could absolutely still appeal. And most importantly, we haven’t heard directly from President Trump on this yet. And he is known to appeal rulings he doesn’t like. He does not give up very easily, so it’s also possible that when the political backlash dies down, he could try to resurrect this fund.
But the other side of this coin is Trump may be forced to give up the fund whether he likes it or not. That’s because the federal judges will likely move forward with these cases even if the Trump administration wants to drop the fund.
And it’s not just that federal judge in Virginia who’s involved. The DOJ conveniently left out of its statement today that there’s another federal judge involved too. A federal judge in Miami also blocked this fund on Friday. And it just so happens that Miami judge is the one who was overseeing President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS that started this whole saga.
President Trump dropped that lawsuit when he and his own DOJ came up with this out-of-court settlement that included this $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. They also came up with a deal that the IRS cannot audit or even investigate the previous tax returns of Trump himself, his family, his extended family, or his businesses.
The Miami judge never saw that deal, nor did she get to approve the settlement because they came up with it out of court. But now she’s absolutely going to take a look after a bipartisan group of 35 retired federal judges brought it to her attention that it’s very possible the president and the DOJ may have committed a “fraud” on the court.
They claim Trump was controlling both sides of the litigation, which is illegal. In her ruling, the judge wrote: “A party’s decision to file a frivolous lawsuit for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement may qualify as such an improper purpose.”
She says it is her responsibility to investigate the circumstances surrounding Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies.
See the post from DOJ here.
