Two federal judges in two separate courts have spent June asking the Justice Department to confirm, formally and in writing, that it has abandoned the $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. In both cases, the department has declined. The fund itself traces back to a settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, and is meant to compensate people who say they were mistreated by what the administration calls a weaponized Justice Department under the prior administration. The Senate left its budget authority untouched when it passed the $70 billion ICE and Border Patrol funding bill earlier this month, despite two failed amendments to remove it.
Two Judges, Two Demands
In federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had already indefinitely blocked the fund. On June 12, 2026, she went further, ordering Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to file signed declarations, under penalty of perjury, confirming they would not create or operate the fund under any name and within seven days. Separately, in federal court in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Richard Leon was weighing a request from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for a temporary restraining order to block the fund outright. Leon declined to issue the order, accepting Blanche’s public statements that the fund was dead, but warned the department directly in court: “Don’t play possum with this court.”
The Answer Was No
On June 19, 2026, the Justice Department filed its response to Judge Brinkema’s order. It declined to submit the declarations. In its filing, the department called the declarations “unnecessary” and argued that compelling sworn testimony from senior Executive Branch officials “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.” The same department that told a different judge, and told House lawmakers in early June, that the fund was “not moving forward, ever,” would not put that statement into a signed filing when a federal judge asked it to.
Why the Distinction Matters
A public statement from a deputy attorney general carries no legal consequence if the department changes course later. A sworn declaration filed under penalty of perjury does. Refusing to file one while continuing to make the same claim out loud is, functionally, the difference between a promise and a commitment. The department’s separation of powers argument, that a court cannot compel testimony from senior officials about their own policy decisions, is a real legal question. It is also, as both judges have now signaled in different ways, hard to square with an administration that keeps saying the fund is gone but will not say so under oath.
Where It Stands
The fund remains blocked by Judge Brinkema’s indefinite order. No commission to evaluate claims exists. No money has been distributed. Congress did not remove its budget authority when it had the chance in June. Two judges have now separately invited the department to resolve the question on the record, and twice the department has chosen not to. The fund is not active. It is also not, in any document a court can rely on, dead.