The Trump administration will be back in federal court Friday fighting to end a lawsuit that has kept its controversial $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund frozen — without ever agreeing to swear the fund is truly finished, according to a new analysis.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who indefinitely blocked the fund in June, will hear the government's bid to dismiss the case in Virginia, but her ruling offered the administration an off-ramp, reported MS NOW's Fallon Gallagher.
"When Brinkema blocked the fund, she gave the government an opportunity to declare — under penalty of perjury — that it would not move forward with the fund in any way, shape or form in the future," Gallagher wrote. "If they did that, she indicated she would likely dismiss the case."
The government never filed that declaration. Instead, Attorney General Todd Blanche posted an unsigned rescission notice on social media in August, stating that the fund's founding order "is rescinded and shall have no force or effect" and that "there is no Fund."
But the wording, plaintiffs point out, is entirely present tense.
Blanche's rescission order describes the fund's status today without ever committing that a similar fund, under a different name, couldn't be revived later.
Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which brought the lawsuit, argues that Blanche's order gives away the game.
"It's very clear that this administration had no interest in halting the fund," she told MS NOW. "They have halted the fund because of the court order that's in place blocking the fund." She said the DOJ's dismissal push is part of a broader pattern of avoiding "accountability from the courts and from the people."
The Justice Department maintains the issue is moot, telling the court that officials have said "countless times" — publicly, in filings and in sworn congressional testimony — that the fund is dead. Government lawyers wrote they're seeking dismissal "not because the Fund will continue (it will not)," but on narrower jurisdictional grounds.
Plaintiffs, including a former Jan. 6 prosecutor, aren't buying the semantics.
"This present-tense wordsmithing assuredly does not affirm, under penalty of perjury," that the fund won't proceed "in any manner, or under any name," they wrote in a filing — noting that both Trump and Blanche have said they believe people affected by "weaponization" deserve compensation.
Blanche's August posts also sought to narrow a separate IRS immunity deal shielding Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization from existing audits — but that clarification was unsigned, meaning the original, far broader immunity agreement may still stand.
If Brinkema grants the dismissal, both fights — the fund and the immunity deal — could lose their last legal check.