Unfinished promise

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the end of a controversial justice fund.

On Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche answered questions about the Department of Justice’s Anti-weaponization fund. It was designed to compensate victims of alleged Biden-era political targeting…but faced bipartisan opposition in Congress.

BLANCHE: We are not moving forward with the fund. Period. 

MENG: Not moving forward ever?

BLANCHE: Correct.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: What’s behind the rise and fall of the fund?

WORLD’s Harrison Watters reports from Washington.

HARRISON WATTERS: Attorney Brett Tolman was getting calls multiple times a day after the DOJ announced the fund in May.

TOLMAN: The individual's wanting to know, you know, "what can I do because this is what happened to me or a loved one of mine and this is what they did"…

Tolman is a former United States Attorney for Utah, and now Chair of American Justice at the America First Policy Institute.

The Anti-weaponization fund came out of a recent settlement between President Trump and the IRS in a case about Trump family tax records leaked to the media in 2020. While Trump sought $10 billion in damages, he settled for roughly $1.8 billion, but not for himself.

TOLMAN: That was really just the mechanism to do what I think he all along wanted to do, and that was to somehow, while he's in charge of the executive branch, make amends to those who found themselves in the crosshairs unfairly and unlawfully by the Justice Department.

The plan was to compensate Americans targeted by the Biden administration with elevated misdemeanor and felony charges. A five-member committee would review cases and award payments. 

While Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters all were welcome to apply, many wondered about one category in particular: January 6th Capitol protestors.

REPORTER: Should people that attacked the Capitol building and assaulted police officers, should they be eligible?

Vance said each case would be reviewed on its own merits.

VANCE: If we think that somebody was unfairly prosecuted and deserves just compensation, then that's what this fund is going to exist to provide.

Some Conservatives, like Tolman, saw the fund as an olive branch. Others saw something more self-serving. Paul Larkin is Senior Legal Fellow at the think tank Advancing American Freedom.

LARKIN: The whole thing is rather a shady effort to try to get around the proposition that only when Congress has authorized money to be paid, should it be paid.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cited Obama-era cases where the government created a new process to settle lawsuits. Larkin says Blanche went too far by not requiring claimants to have a pending legal case against the government, just a legal claim stating he or she was a victim of lawfare.

LARKIN: You actually need to have suffered some harm in order to be able to bring a tort suit against anyone, including the United States.

Democrat lawmakers cried foul when the DOJ announced the fund, and some Republicans agreed.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune delayed votes on funding for immigration enforcement agencies, saying the White House first needed to answer questions about the fund. Then on Friday, a district judge blocked the fund while a lawsuit by former Capitol Hill police officers continues. The DOJ later said it would abide by that order. 

Reporters asked Majority Leader Thune about it on Tuesday.

REPORTER: Speaker Johnson just told us it's his understanding that this fund is off the table. So is that your understanding as well after speaking with the acting attorney general?

THUNE: That is correct.

While the anti-weaponization fund is effectively dead, Tolman says the DOJ still has a way to make good on the President’s promise to rectify alleged political prosecutions.

TOLMAN: There was a weaponization group that was organized when Trump came in, you know, last year…

So far, that DOJ working group has published just one report, on the prosecution of pro-lifers under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances—or FACE—Act. Tolman says the DOJ can use existing powers to dismiss cases—even where defendants have already been sentenced.

TOLMAN: You know, many of those right now could be dismissed under Rule 48, which would, I would promise you, in a lot of cases, mean far more than any compensation would be to, you know, get that case dismissed and a and a clean slate for folks who were unfairly and improperly targeted.

While the DOJ has not appealed the court order blocking the fund, it still has a court date for next Friday.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

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