On September 4, 2026, a federal magistrate judge ordered the Justice Department to disclose who designed the structure of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — the $1.776 billion payout program the Justice Department announced on May 18 and formally rescinded in early August. The order landed in a lawsuit over a fund the Justice Department has rescinded, though the fund’s future remains disputed.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan D. Davis, sitting in Alexandria, Virginia, is overseeing evidence-gathering in Floyd et al. V. U.S. Department of Justice, a suit brought by Andrew Floyd, a former Justice Department attorney fired over his role in January 6 cases, law professor Jonathan Caravello, and organizational plaintiffs including the City of New Haven, the National Abortion Federation and Common Cause.
The September 4 order followed Davis’s August 28 order requiring DOJ to begin providing information in the case, despite the government’s argument that the case should be decided from the existing agency record rather than through broader evidence-gathering. They argue the fund’s creation exceeded the executive branch’s authority, bypassed Congress’s control over federal spending, and violated the federal law governing how agencies are allowed to act. The suit was later amended to also challenge what the plaintiffs call an “unlawful IRS (Internal Revenue Service) immunity scheme” embedded in the settlement. Davis called the plaintiffs’ broader request — covering everyone involved in conceiving, building and running the fund — a “fishing expedition,” but ruled that the identities of the people who designed the fund’s structure were relevant to the case. He ordered DOJ to hand those names over, though the material will stay shielded from public view while the case continues.
Key facts
- Fund: the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” worth $1.776 billion (commonly rounded to $1.8 billion, including in this headline)
- Created: May 18, 2026, as part of a settlement ending a $10 billion Trump family lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury
- Rescinded: early August 2026, by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
- Latest order: September 4, 2026 — Magistrate Judge Ivan D. Davis ordered DOJ to name who designed the fund’s structure
- Where: Floyd et al. V. U.S. Department of Justice, in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia
- Money paid out so far: none — no commission was ever appointed, no claims portal was confirmed to have opened to the public, and no claim was paid
Timeline
- December 15, 2025 — Democracy Forward sues DOJ and Treasury over a separate, unrelated $230 million payout request
- January 29, 2026 — Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization sue the IRS and Treasury over the 2020 Littlejohn tax-record leak
- May 18, 2026 — Settlement creates the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”
- Late May 2026 — A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocks DOJ from setting up the fund
- June 25, 2026 — Judge Brinkema rules the underlying case can proceed rather than be dismissed as moot
- July 13, 2026 — Judge Kathleen M. Williams rules the original Trump v. IRS suit was pursued for an “improper purpose”
- Early August 2026 — Blanche signs an order rescinding the fund
- August 8, 2026 — Senate confirms Blanche as attorney general, 50-49
- September 4, 2026 — Magistrate Judge Davis orders DOJ to name who designed the fund’s structure
How the fund was born
The fund traces back to a $10 billion lawsuit President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization filed on January 29, 2026, in federal court in Miami. It accused the IRS and Treasury Department of failing to stop the 2020 leak of Trump’s tax records by Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor who received a five-year prison term in 2024 for that leak.
On May 18, 2026, the case settled. Trump and his co-plaintiffs got a formal apology and no money, agreed to drop the suit for good, and withdrew two other administrative claims. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” drawn from the federal Judgment Fund — a permanent Treasury account the government uses to pay certain settlements and court judgments. Trump himself was not eligible to collect from it. As designed, any American could file a voluntary claim alleging they had been targeted by government “weaponization and lawfare,” with no test for political affiliation. A five-member commission appointed by the attorney general would run it, taking claims until December 1, 2028, after which any unspent money would revert to the Treasury. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said when the fund was announced.
Why it never got off the ground
The fund drew bipartisan backlash almost immediately, largely because nothing in its design excluded people found guilty in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot from applying. Reporting from that period described January 6 defendants and supporters organizing to file claims. But no claims process or claims portal was ever confirmed to have opened to the public, and no claim has ever been confirmed as approved or paid. A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the Justice Department from taking further steps to set up or operate the fund starting in late May 2026, an order later extended into June. Around the same time, Acting Attorney General Blanche told Congress the department was “not moving forward with the fund, period.” That statement exists only in the hearing transcript — he never issued any separate written order or document confirming it. Separately, Senate Republicans blocked Democratic Senator Adam Schiff’s “Drain the Slush Fund Act,” which would have permanently barred this kind of DOJ settlement payout.
The court fight kept going. Weighing whether the underlying lawsuit was now moot, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema — the Virginia judge overseeing that broader case, a separate role from Magistrate Judge Davis’s discovery order — took a different approach. She asked Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward to sign a written declaration, under penalty of perjury, stating the fund was truly dead. DOJ’s lawyers declined. On June 25, 2026, Brinkema ruled the case would proceed rather than be thrown out.
The formal rescission — with a deal attached
In early August 2026, Blanche signed an order stating: “The Attorney General’s May 18, 2026 Order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” The order itself noted that nothing had actually moved in the fund’s three months of existence: no commission members were ever appointed, no money was transferred, no claims process was built, and no claims were paid. Reporting has tied the timing of the rescission to a Senate standoff — Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis had made their support for confirming Blanche as attorney general conditional on the fund being killed. The Senate confirmed Blanche 50-49 on August 8, 2026, with Democrats and Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voting no. At his confirmation hearing, Blanche said flatly: “It is a moot issue, meaning there is no weaponization fund. The weaponization fund is dead.”
Is it actually dead?
That is less settled than DOJ’s language suggests. Reporting from NBC News describes a possible loophole. The rescission order canceled the May 18 order that stood up the fund’s machinery, but not the underlying settlement clause obligating the Justice Department to create such a fund in the first place. By NBC’s account, that clause can only be changed by written agreement of everyone who signed the original settlement — and those signatories reportedly never signed the rescission itself. Trump has said the fund “is dead, but you know, I wish it weren’t,” and has reportedly not ruled out future payouts tied to January 6. DOJ’s official position, for now, remains what Blanche has said publicly: the fund is rescinded and inoperative.
A separate legal problem in Florida
While the fund fight played out in Virginia, the settlement that created it ran into trouble of its own. On July 13, 2026, U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams — a different judge, presiding in Florida over the original Trump v. IRS lawsuit, not the Virginia case above — issued a 56-page ruling finding that the original Trump v. IRS lawsuit had been pursued for “an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a settlement that had no viable basis in law or fact,” and that there had “never” been genuine adverseness between the parties. She referred Trump attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for possible discipline, barred America First Legal’s Daniel Epstein from practicing in her court for a year, and sent findings on Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward to bar authorities in New York and Washington, D.C. Separately, a group of 35 retired federal judges filed a motion in late May calling the settlement “a product of collusion” and “itself a fraud on the Court” — their own characterization in a court filing, not a finding by any judge.
Not the same as the $230 million story
The $230 million figure refers to an unrelated matter. Democracy Forward sued the Justice Department and Treasury on December 15, 2025 — months before the Anti-Weaponization Fund existed — over stonewalled records requests about a separately reported $230 million payout Trump was said to be personally seeking, tied to investigations into his own conduct. That is a different matter from the $1.776 billion fund, which was built to compensate other people alleging they were targeted, not Trump himself.
What happens next
Under Judge Davis’s September 4 order, the Justice Department must identify who designed the fund and turn over related discovery material in the Floyd case; that material will remain out of public view while the litigation continues. For now, the fund that never appointed a commissioner, never opened a claims process and never paid a claim stays, in the Justice Department’s own telling, dead — while a lawsuit over exactly how dead keeps moving through a courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.
Sources and further reading
- Justice Department Announces Anti-Weaponization Fund
- NEWS: Senate Republicans Block Sen. Schiff’s Push to Halt Trump’s Corrupt Payouts, Prevent Future Abuse of DOJ Settlement
- Order rescinding the Anti-Weaponization Fund (AG order text)
- SDFL Settlement (filing)
- Lawsuit Against Trump-Vance Administration’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Amended…
- Individuals, Organizations Harmed by the Trump-Vance Administration Sue to Block $1.776 Billion Slush Fund
- Floyd et al. v. DOJ et al. — Motion for Preliminary Injunction (complaint)