Attorney General Todd Blanche was confirmed on a dubious promise to holdout Republican senators that he would cancel the slush fund for MAGA allies and would revive it, but Senate Democrats now suspect he already has a workaround in mind.
They're right to be skeptical, according to MS NOW's Hayes Brown, because money is already flowing to President Donald Trump's allies, and the 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Blanche a letter last week questioning what he's got planned.
The senators noted that documents released ahead of Blanche's confirmation “make no assurance you will not use other mechanisms, including quietly settling administrative claims brought against the government, to compensate President Trump’s political allies, effectively accomplishing the goals of the Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Instead, according to the columnist, they argued that those documents “create a clear avenue” for rewarding Trump’s supporters through the same loophole that Blanche had previously attempted to manipulate.
The "anti-weaponization fund" was novel in its brazenness, but the $1.8 billion settlement came from the somewhat mundane Judgment Fund created in the 1950s so Congress wouldn't have to appropriate money each time the government lost a civil suit. It originally capped payments at $100,000 and covered only final judgments, but by 1961, amendments extended it to settlements too, and today it disburses billions annually with little congressional oversight.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and fellow Democrats want DOJ guidance on the Judgment Fund, any DOJ-White House communications about specific awards, and a full list of payments made since Jan. 20, 2025. The Treasury Department's public payment-search tool exists, but tallying even just DOJ's disbursements currently returns an error.
As MS NOW contributor Anthony Coley has noted, the fund isn't the only avenue for payouts. The Federal Tort Claims Act lets people harmed by government misconduct sidestep sovereign immunity, and FTCA settlements are payable from the Judgment Fund too. Michael Flynn and Carter Page each collected $1.25 million this year that way.
Judiciary Democrats cited reports that Blanche has explored alternate ways to fulfill the fund's aims, including for Jan. 6 rioters. Since the underlying IRS suit was settled before a judge ever ruled on its merits, it's easy to imagine that maneuver becoming a template – FTCA claims quietly resolved through predetermined "settlements" still funded from the same bottomless well.
The Judgment Fund was built to spare an overburdened Congress from adjudicating every judgment, Brown wrote, but that convenience has let too much discretion drift to the executive, with no mechanism for lawmakers to block arrangements that smell fraudulent.
"At bare minimum, Congress should enact both a bar on payouts to plaintiffs who took part in the Jan. 6 attack and a new process for reviewing settlements as suspect as the one Blanche authorized for the president’s benefit," Brown concluded.