Justice Department announces nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump
allies in a deal to drop IRS suit
[May 19, 2026]
By FATIMA HUSSEIN, ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration announced Monday the creation
of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican
president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and
prosecuted, an arrangement that Democrats and government watchdogs
derided as “corrupt” and unconstitutional.
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion is part of a settlement
that resolves President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal
Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. It will allow people
who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes,
including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for
payouts, creating what acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called “a
lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and
seek redress.”
"The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any
American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs
that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,”
Blanche said in a statement that made no mention of how investigations
and prosecutions of Trump's political opponents under his watch have
exposed the Justice Department to the same claims of politicized law
enforcement that he said he opposed.
Blanche is expected to be pressed on the fund when he testifies Tuesday
on Capitol Hill about the Justice Department budget.
Nearly 100 Democrats in the House of Representatives signed onto a legal
brief urging a judge to block what they described as an unprecedented
resolution that they said would unjustly enrich people close to the
president with taxpayer dollars and open the door to meritless claims of
political persecution.
“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,”
Donald Sherman, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
in Washington, said in a statement.
The fund would represent not only a highly unorthodox resolution but
also a further demonstration of the administration’s eagerness to reward
allies of Trump who have long insisted that they have been unjustly
investigated and in some cases charged and convicted. Most notably, the
president on his first day back in office pardoned or commuted the
sentences of supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
His Justice Department since then has approved payouts to supporters
entangled in the Trump-Russia investigation and investigated and
prosecuted some of his perceived adversaries.
Trump’s attorneys suggested in their court filing seeking to dismiss the
case that the resolution would not be reviewable by a judge. But a group
of 93 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a challenge.
“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of
taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund
for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists,
rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat
police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his
election stealing schemes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the
House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
Trump has long raised ‘weaponization’ claims
The Justice Department did not name specific individuals who might stand
to benefit from the fund, but said there were no “partisan requirements”
for applicants and that anyone who believes they've been unfairly
persecuted could seek a payout as well as an apology. A five-member
commission appointed by Blanche will oversee the fund.
The creation of the fund is in keeping with Trump’s long-running claims
that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was
weaponized against him.
He has cited as proof the since-abandoned criminal charges he faced
between his first and second terms of conspiring to overturn the results
of the 2020 presidential election and of retaining classified documents
at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. As a condition for resolving the
lawsuit, Trump has agreed to resolve administrative claims in which he
sought compensation over the Mar-a-Lago investigation and a separate
probe into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, an inquiry that
unfolded during his first term in office and that he has long railed
against.
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President Donald Trump speaks about prescription drug prices in the
South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building
on the White House campus, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
At the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump was asked if
individuals who committed violence on January 6th should receive
compensation from the fund. “It’ll all be dependent on a committee,”
Trump said, adding, “I didn’t do this deal. It was told to me
yesterday.” He said the fund was dedicated to “reimbursing people
who were horribly treated.”
Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden
administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization
and has said his decisions followed facts, the evidence and the law.
His Justice Department investigated prominent Democrats too, most
significantly by appointing a special counsel who scrutinized
President Joe Biden for his handling of classified information.
Another special counsel brought tax and gun charges against Biden’s
son Hunter.
Nonetheless, Trump’s current Justice Department has actively pursued
the president’s retribution campaign, bringing criminal charges
against some of his political opponents and initiating a
wide-ranging investigation that aims to establish a yearslong
conspiracy between law enforcement and intelligence officials
against Trump.
In defending the deal, the Justice Department pointed to a fund
established by the Obama administration to compensate Native
American farmers who said they had experienced racial
discrimination. But that fund was not created with a goal of
benefiting allies of the president who had been previously
investigated for potential criminal conduct.
Trump's lawsuit followed the leak of tax returns
Trump alleged in a lawsuit filed in Florida earlier this year that a
previous leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax
records caused him reputational harm and unfairly tarnished his
business reputation.
The president’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump also joined the
suit.
In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who worked
for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm,
was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to
leaking tax information about Trump and others to two news outlets
between 2018 and 2020.
The outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the
description and time frame align with stories about Trump’s tax
returns in The New York Times and reporting about wealthy Americans’
taxes in the nonprofit investigative journalism organization
ProPublica. The 2020 New York Times report found Trump paid $750 in
federal income tax the year he first entered the White House, and no
income tax at all some years, thanks to reported colossal losses.
In the first sign that a settlement was coming, lawyers for the
president asked a judge last month to pause the case for 90 days
while the two sides work to reach a settlement or resolution.
Kathleen Williams, the judge handling the lawsuit, dismissed the
case Monday and in her filing admonished the government agencies,
notably the Justice Department, for not being transparent about the
settlement deal.
She said no agency "submitted any settlement documents nor filed any
documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was
an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy
existed.”
Williams had previously assigned a group of attorneys to determine
whether there was a conflict in the case since, as sitting
president, Trump was suing “entities whose decisions are subject to
his direction.”
The lawyers group wrote the court this month expressing concerns
about whether the Justice Department was properly insulated from the
president’s control of the case.
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