U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema pressed the Justice Department on Friday after lawyers asked her to dismiss a lawsuit tied to the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, saying the underlying issues are still “alive and kicking” in her view. She also questioned whether there was a legal stand-in for the rescinded fund, even after the department said it was gone.
The dispute is being watched because the fight is no longer just about whether the named fund exists. It is about whether taxpayer money could still move through another route if the court decides the Judgment Fund can do the work instead. Brinkema called that account “a less transparent structure,” a line that went to the heart of why the case still has force even after the fund’s formal recission.
Attorney General Todd Blanche issued that recission order in August, and Justice Department lawyers told Brinkema the fund is dead. Andrew Block asked what remedy the plaintiff wants given that “the fund is dead.” But Brinkema pushed back on the idea that the case ends there. “That entity is gone,” she said, referring to the Anti-Weaponization Fund, before asking, “But is there a functional equivalent?”
Her concern centered on the Judgment Fund, a permanent U.S. Treasury account managed by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service that pays court judgments and Justice Department legal settlements against the federal government. Brinkema suggested that some defendants convicted of FACE Act crimes may already have received large payouts from that account. One of them was Paul Vaughn, who was convicted in January 2024 for his role in blockading an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tenn., in March 2021, later received a pardon, and said his taxpayer-funded payout was “seven figures.”
That leaves the case in a narrow but important position. The Trump administration may have killed the named fund, but Brinkema’s questions make clear the lawsuit still has a live target if the court decides a different payment channel amounts to the same thing under another name. The next question is whether that is enough for the case to continue, or whether the rescission really closes the door on the payment system at the center of it.
