A federal judge has frozen the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and given three of the administration’s most senior officials until June 19 to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the fund is dead. The order, issued June 11-12 by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, is a preliminary injunction that blocks the fund indefinitely while the underlying case moves forward.
It is one of the sharpest judicial checks yet on a Justice Department initiative that critics warned could function as a taxpayer-funded payout machine for the president’s allies.
What the Judge Ordered
Brinkema did not simply pause the program. She ordered the administration to file a sworn declaration affirming that the fund “will not proceed in any manner, or under any name.” That declaration must be signed by three officials personally: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The detail that makes this order unusually forceful is the demand that it be signed under penalty of perjury. That standard means the officials are not merely issuing a policy memo that could be quietly reversed later. They would be putting their names on a legal document with criminal exposure attached if they were to revive the program after swearing it was finished.
The judge indicated that if the declaration is filed by the June 19 deadline, she is likely to drop the case. If it is not filed, the legal fight continues, and the injunction blocking the fund stays in place.
Why the Fund Alarmed Critics
The roughly $1.776 billion fund was presented by the Justice Department as a mechanism to “redress claims” from people who say they were harmed by “weaponization and lawfare” — broad language describing alleged politically motivated prosecutions and investigations.
The concern was not the abstract idea of compensating people wronged by the government. It was who lined up to collect. Shortly after the fund was announced, several people convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — along with allies of the president — signaled they intended to apply for relief. To critics, that turned a vaguely worded program into something closer to a reward system for the administration’s political friends, financed by public money.
A Preliminary Injunction, Not a Final Verdict
It is important to be precise about where this stands. Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction, not a final ruling on the merits. The fund is blocked right now, indefinitely, while litigation plays out. But the judge has also handed the administration a clear off-ramp: file the sworn declaration, confirm the fund is permanently shelved, and the case can be resolved.
That structure puts the decision squarely on the three named officials. They can end the dispute by formally swearing the program will never operate — or they can decline, and keep the legal battle alive while the money stays frozen.
What This Means for Americans
At its core, this is a question of whether $1.8 billion in public funds could be steered toward a politically favored group with minimal transparency. A federal judge has now said that cannot move forward without sworn accountability from the officials at the top. For taxpayers, the practical stakes are direct: the money stays put unless and until the administration commits, on the record, to abandoning the fund. The coming days — and whether Blanche, Woodward, and Bessent sign by June 19 — will determine how this ends.
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