US President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Two new lawsuits challenging the creation of the controversial $1.8 billion ‘lawfare” fund by the Department of Justice were filed Friday in federal courts in Washington, D.C. and Virginia.
The civil complaints come as several members of Congress have introduced legislation to block the fund, and as President Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have defended it.
The two suits say the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund, which was set up as part of a settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service, violate the federal Administrative Procedure Act. One also alleges that it violates the U.S. Constitution, while the other says it violates the Freedom of Information Act.
Trump got no money in the settlement. But the fund is intended to compensate many of his supporters who allege they were victims of prosecutorial overreach by the DOJ under the Biden administration. And Trump and his family members are getting immunity from IRS enforcement actions related to their tax returns under the settlement.
“Created following a collusive agreement between the President and his own administration, this Fund has no congressional authorization, no basis in law, and no accountability,” the civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia alleges.
One of the plaintiffs in the case is Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who has said he was fired last year for his work prosecuting cases against Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The other plaintiffs are Jonathan Caravello, a professor at California State University Channel Islands, and the city of New Haven, Conn.
Caravello was arrested in 2025 while protesting an immigration raid in California, and subsequently acquitted in April of what he called a baseless charge of felony assault of a federal officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
New Haven has been sued by the Trump administration for acting as a so-called sanctuary city for immigrants.
The other complaint was filed in D.C. federal court by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW.
“The Slush Fund Order’s secrecy provisions enable Defendants to circumvent the Judgment Fund statute’s public disclosure requirements,” that suit says.
“And they allow Defendants to evade public scorn for awarding taxpayer funds to, for example, a pardoned January 6 insurrectionist later convicted and sentenced to life in prison for child sex abuse crimes, a pardoned insurrectionist and threatened assassin, and numerous other convicted felons pardoned by President Trump who are now clamoring for taxpayer-funded ‘restitution’ from Defendants’ illegal Slush Fund.”
The suits come two days after two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a suit in Washington, D.C., federal court to block the fund.
Trump said, in a Truth Social post earlier Friday, “I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward.”
“I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Trump said.
“Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”I gave up a lot of money” by allowing the fund to be created.
Trump’s comments on social media came a day after the fund received strong pushback from Senate Republicans, and some lawmakers promoted legislation that would ban taxpayer money from being used for the $1.8 billion payout pool.
Critics of the fund have called it a “slush fund,” and blasted the idea that members of the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, who were prosecuted for their actions, could get payouts from it, even if they had attacked police officers that day.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced a bill that would bar federal money from being used to pay any claims submitted to the DOJ’s fund.
On Thursday, Blanche met with Republican senators to defend the plan, but a number of them expressed dismay about it.
After the meeting, in a sign of discord among the caucus, GOP leadership dropped plans to have a series of votes on a package that would fund immigration enforcement agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters on Thursday after the sit-down with Blanche that the White House needs “to help with this issue, because we have a lot of members who are concerned.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who for years was the leader of the Republican caucus, blasted the fund on Thursday.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” McConnell said in a statement. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick.”
But earlier Friday, several House Republican lawmakers defended the fund in interviews with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, when asked about the fund, said that Trump has “been one of the biggest victims of weaponization,” and that he considers it “an appropriate approach and use of tax dollars, as long as the guardrails exist.”
But Arrington also said, “We have to have the accountability measures and the safeguards, so that it is not a quote, slush fund, where you’re doling out monies to political allies that don’t have legitimate claims.”
“It needs to be fair and objective … that’s why I think that the Senate’s going to find a path forward,” he said.
Those guardrails could come as part of the next congressional budget reconciliation package, “or they could just have an agreement,” Arrington suggested.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said of the fund, “I think that there is a need for it.”
Comer claimed Trump had been the victim of “lawfare.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., when asked about the case settlement that led to the creation of the fund, said, “I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t know what the details are.”
“No one [knows] weaponization of government against him and his family better than Donald Trump,” Emmer said. “I suspect that whatever agreement was made, it’s fair on both sides.”
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., slammed Trump and Republicans over the DOJ fund and other of the president’s pet projects, including a new White House ballroom and a new arch near Arlington National Cemetery.
“You can’t have what we saw on display here this week, where we have a Republican Party and president who are proposing a billion dollars for a ballroom, a $2 billion slush fund for the president, and $75 billion to further fund ICE that does not need more funding, and not a dime for the American people,” Clark said on “Squawk Box.”
The Trump administration is “almost showing contempt for them, building ballrooms and arches,” Clark said.
