How The GOP Revolted Against Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund

WASHINGTON—Todd Blanche’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was a dream come true for conservatives furious over the prosecution of Americans under President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump repeatedly professed himself delighted with the fund, Vice President JD Vance defended it from the briefing room podium, and, for a moment, it seemed that victims of the Biden administration’s lawfare might get compensated. 

Only a few weeks later, the Anti-Weaponization Fund has been effectively squashed. Clinton-appointed Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary restraining order on May 29 blocking the Justice Department from taking further action on the fund. Over the weekend, Justice Department officials determined that they had to comply with the court order. And by Tuesday, after tense meetings with Senate Republicans, Acting Attorney General Blanche testified: “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” 

On Wednesday, the president weighed in.

“Well, Congress didn’t want it,” President Trump told The Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese from the Oval Office on Wednesday. “You have to talk to Congress. The Republican senators, some of them got very weak knees. They didn’t have the stomach for the fight.”

It is a rare admission of defeat from Trump and his administration, which doesn’t often acknowledge an end to its efforts with such finality.

The DOJ had announced the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund on May 18. Officials said the program was intended for anyone who believed they had been unfairly targeted by any administration, whether January 6 defendants, pro-life protesters, or even Hunter Biden. 

Democrats were quick to oppose it, claiming that the Trump administration was planning to reward “criminals,” such as the January 6 defendants who had attacked police officers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led the charge, calling on his colleagues to join him in an effort to shut down the “MAGA slush fund.” 

“If Republicans return to reconciliation, we will be ready with amendments to shut the fund down,” he vowed. “If they try to bury the issue, we will force them to the Senate floor. If they try to sneak behind appropriations, we will fight them there, too. There will be no escape hatch.”

During a May 19 press briefing with Vance, White House reporters repeatedly asked the vice president to confirm or deny specific hypotheticals about January 6 defendants receiving compensation from the fund. Vance swatted away their concerns, saying, “we’re not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer.”

“We’re trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system,” he explained. 

“Look,” he added, “if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this fund because he thinks he was targeted by the Department of Justice for political reasons, he has every right to apply, just like any other American.”

Things came to a head two days later when around 45 Republican senators met with Blanche on Capitol Hill. Many of these senators had serious concerns about who exactly would be applying for the fund and what guardrails would be in place, a Senate GOP aide explained to The Daily Wire. Many of them left the meeting with more questions than answers. 

It wasn’t just the typical Republican holdouts who had concerns. 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) also expressed frustration at the timing of the fund, which the DOJ announced right as senators were about to vote on a reconciliation bill to fund border security.

“A colleague described the timing of the announcement as galactically stupid,” he told The Daily Wire on Wednesday evening. “But we’re talking about the timing, not the fund. I fully support using the Judgement Fund to compensate citizens abused by the government, including those harmed by Biden’s weaponization of DOJ.”

And Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), usually a staunch supporter of the president’s agenda, had argued leading up to the meeting that she did not want anyone who had attacked police on January 6 to be compensated. Britt told The Daily Wire that “the weaponization of our federal government to target Americans for their political beliefs was real and dangerous,” and that she supports “the goal of seeking justice for all Americans who have been unlawfully targeted by the government.”

Republicans less aligned with the president were even more critical. 

“So, the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). 

And Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, still licking his wounds after losing his primary bid to Trump-backed challenger Julia Letlow, mocked the Anti-Weaponization Fund as a “slush fund.”

“People are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not about putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the President and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability,” Cassidy said in a social media post.

“This is adding to our national debt,” he added. “If there needs to be a settlement, the administration should bring it to Congress to decide.” 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged to Axios that Trump’s endorsements against Cassidy or Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) were not helping the matter. 

“It’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune said. “You can’t disconnect those things.”

The senators were very unhappy, and they did not hold back in their meeting with Blanche. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) described the Capitol Hill showdown as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.” The Texas Republican said there was yelling, even screaming. 

“There were fireworks at an epic level,” Cruz shared in a late May episode of his podcast, adding that “Fiery does not begin to cut it” and at least half of the senators “were blasting the attorney general and they were pissed.”

Determined to block the DOJ fund, Democrats had promised to force votes on amendments that would target the fund as they voted on the reconciliation package — voting that was supposed to begin on Thursday. 

“We were going to lose those amendment votes because of the 40-plus Republicans in the room, I’d say half of them were ready to vote with the Democrats on this,” Cruz explained. “If the judgment fund had not been announced this week, we would be right now on the Senate floor, we’d be funding border security.”

Blanche tried to convince the senators that those who assaulted police officers on January 6 would not benefit from the fund, Cruz shared, and the acting attorney general assured the senators that none of the Trump family would benefit either.

“Todd Blanche was adamant, and he said not just ‘no,’ but ‘hell no,'” Cruz said.

The Senate was about to take up the reconciliation bill that day, May 21. But after the meeting with Blanche, the lawmakers canceled the votes and decided that both the House and the Senate would depart Washington, D.C., and head home for Memorial Day recess. 

“I do find it quite rich that under Arctic Frost the Senate was all too willing to vote for payments because they were wronged, but they don’t allow the American people the same opportunity,” a senior congressional aide close to the matter told The Daily Wire. 

The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with…

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) June 1, 2026

That Friday, Judge Brinkema issued her temporary restraining order blocking the fund from going into effect.

And on Monday, after House Speaker Mike Johnson met with the president and told him the fund was “a difficult prospect right now, given our vote tallies,” the Justice Department announced that it would abide by the court ruling, though it strongly disagreed with the court. Blanche snuffed out even more hope, stating in his congressional testimony that the DOJ would not be “moving forward with the fund, period.” 

Blanche doesn’t seem to have suffered in the president’s eyes over the matter. Amid rumors on Wednesday evening that Trump was about to officially appoint Blanche as the new head of the Justice Department, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Daily Wire that Trump is “very pleased with the job [Blanche is] doing so far.”

And the president himself offered a glimmer of hope for the fund on Wednesday afternoon. 

“A radical left judge ruled against it,” he told reporters. “And we’ll see how that all works out.”