President Donald Trump's administration is planning to pull the plug on his $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay out people supposedly victimized by "lawfare" — a controversial plan that critics claimed was a slush fund to pay out money to Jan. 6 rioters and other allies of the president convicted of crimes.
According to Axios, White House officials are set to comply with a court order putting the fund on pause and don't have plans at this time to contest the court's action or try to resume it later.
"It's dead for now," one official told Axios.
The fund was created as a supposed "settlement" of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against his own IRS for failing to safeguard his tax information from a whistleblower who illegally leaked it.
However, the optics of the fund led even a number of Republicans to speak out in criticism, and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill are debating a provision in the Homeland Security reconciliation bill that would put sharp restrictions on how any payouts from the fund could potentially be spent.
This also comes as a separate court is reopening the IRS lawsuit at the behest of dozens of retired judges, so as to review whether the settlement in question was appropriate.