What Trump’s $1.8 billion payout fund actually does could stay hidden

The Trump administration’s announcement that it would set up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to deliver payouts to people who say they were harmed by the justice system ignited a whirlwind of controversy, unanswered questions, and uncertainty that could stretch through the rest of President Donald Trump’s term and beyond.

Under the terms laid out by the administration, a five-member panel would distribute a colossal pot of money — dubbed the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — largely shielded from public scrutiny, outside of any evident oversight, and answerable only to Trump and his appointees.

Some of the president’s supporters cheered the effort, saying compensation is needed to help people who were victimized by the government, much like Trump says he has been. Many have already expressed a desire to get a cut of the money, including people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But the fund has provoked outrage and criticism from legal analysts and ethics watchdogs, with Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying it could be used to pay off Trump’s allies and calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”

The pushback extended to Capitol Hill, where bipartisan skepticism of the deal bubbled over this week. On Thursday, Senate Republicans grilled Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, with questions about the fund. Republicans then delayed plans to pass extra funding for immigration enforcement agencies amid frustrations over the issue.

But while controversy has raged, significant — and basic — details about the fund remain unknown.

The payout fund was created through an agreement Trump reached with the IRS to resolve a lawsuit he had filed after his tax returns were leaked by a contractor during his first term.

Trump has defended the fund, writing on social media Friday that he could have settled “for an absolute fortune” but instead was “helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration.”

Much of what is known about the fund so far comes largely from the terms of the agreement laid out in a dozen pages released by the Justice Department, along with public comments from Blanche.

The written agreement offers few assurances that the fund’s actions and decisions would be made public. And though Blanche pledged transparency, much — if not most — of the fund’s workings could remain hidden under the terms of the deal.

Under these terms, decisions made by the administration’s handpicked panel members will be irreversible, with no appeal process, and not subject to any judicial oversight. Claims submitted to the fund can be audited, the document states, but only by the Justice Department or a contractor “designated by the Attorney General.”

The administration has not gone into detail about who might be selected to join the five-member panel tasked with doling out the funds, nor have officials laid out a process for how people can submit complaints or how they will be weighed. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment about these issues.

Rupa Bhattacharyya, legal director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said she was concerned by the fund’s origins, structure, and lack of oversight.

“There’s absolutely no criteria or guidelines created for who is eligible, what sorts of injuries might be compensable, and how much compensation might be given,” said Bhattacharyya, who previously worked as special master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. “In every other fund I have been involved with, all of which were created by Congress, by statute, those sorts of criteria are outlined. And the lack of any sort of guardrails here makes it really concerning, particularly given the amount of money.”

“I have no sense of how this will work in practice,” she said.

According to the settlement agreement released by the Justice Department and a two-page document signed by Blanche, the Trump administration will move $1.776 billion — an apparent nod to the year of the nation’s founding — into “an account for the sole use by the Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

This sum will come from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, an uncapped, taxpayer-funded pot of money intended to pay legal settlements and court judgments against the federal government.

The new fund will have five members appointed by Blanche, the documents say, one of them “chosen in consultation with congressional leadership.” The documents do not explain the nature of this consultation.

The agreement says Blanche has to pick the group’s members within 30 days. Blanche testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that it was too soon to discuss who might be under consideration, though he later said “several people” had applied.

“We want people who will have the ability to evaluate whether somebody who’s applying for compensation is entitled to it — what amount and how to go about doing that,” he told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Among those who have raised their hands is Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, a watchdog group. Howell — a close ally of Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney and former head of its “weaponization” task force — sent a letter to Blanche this week nominating himself for a seat on the commission.

“This task will not be easy,” he wrote. “The Anti-Weaponization Fund is already under attack and will remain under attack. My colleagues and I are steeled for this fight.”

Once people are selected to work on the fund, the agreement released by the Trump administration says, they can leave their posts one of two ways: resigning or being forced off by Trump, who can oust any of them “without cause.”

When the group makes decisions, few people will need to weigh in, according to the Justice Department’s documents. Three members will constitute a quorum, they say, and “a majority of a quorum is authorized to take action.”

Exactly how they will take action, though, is unclear. The settlement agreement says the fund’s members will be able to determine their own processes for examining, granting, or rejecting claims.

But they will have immense latitude, the agreement says, able to give out money, fully accept or reject claims, issue apologies, delay acting on some allegations, and seek supporting evidence.

The agreement lays out some of how this process could work. Anyone petitioning the group will have to “assert at least one legal claim stating that the claimant was a victim of Lawfare and/or Weaponization,” it states.

The group then has to weigh “the totality of the circumstances,” the document continues, including the actions taken by people submitting claims, their “actual damages,” and unspecified “other factors” deemed “just and appropriate.”

The agreement also portrays these decisions as ironclad, saying that there will be “no appeal, arbitration, or judicial review.”

What, if anything, is made public about these decisions remains to be seen. The agreement states that the fund’s members have to send the attorney general “a confidential written report” once a quarter with the names and addresses of people who were given relief and what they received. There is no requirement listed that these details be made public.

During his Tuesday appearance on Capitol Hill, Blanche said that some information from these reports had to be shielded to protect people’s privacy, but he pledged “full transparency” otherwise.

“There’s privacy laws that exist, so I don’t want to sit here today and say every scintilla of data will be released,” he said. “But I very much anticipate that the claims that are awarded — the basis and the amount — will for sure be made public along the way.”

The attorney general is not, however, required to release the details. And the quarterly reports called for in the agreement would address only the people who received relief from the fund, not anyone who had been rejected or had claims pending.

Much of this information appears in a document labeled a “Settlement Agreement,” which was signed by Trump’s personal lawyers as well as top officials with the Justice Department and the IRS.

But the document was not submitted to the judge who had been overseeing Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS.

Trump, two of his sons, and his family business filed a suit against the agency in January. They were seeking as much as $10 billion in damages in connection with a former IRS contractor’s theft of their tax filings, which he then provided to news organizations.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in South Florida, who had been overseeing the lawsuit, had questioned whether the parties were “sufficiently adverse,” because Trump was both a plaintiff and the president overseeing the agencies he was suing.

Williams, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, had asked for briefs from Trump’s lawyers and the IRS by Wednesday. Instead, two days beforehand, Trump’s lawyers moved to voluntarily dismiss the case. No mention was made of any settlement. The same day, the Justice Department announced the nearly $1.8 billion fund.

Williams dismissed and closed the case but noted that there was “no settlement of record,” because nothing of the sort was included in the dismissal notice.

The Justice Department has said Trump will get an apology but no money from the fund. The agreement also states that Trump will withdraw two other legal claims he had filed against the government seeking hundreds of millions of dollars.

An addendum posted the day after the agreement was released — and also signed by Blanche — said the IRS was blocked from pursuing claims against Trump, his relatives, or his businesses that preceded the settlement. It does not include any language limiting future audits.

The Trump administration, in an apparent effort to preempt criticism, has sought to portray the fund as in line with previous government settlements.

The Justice Department has pointed multiple times to a $760 million fund created through a settlement the Obama administration reached to resolve claims of discrimination by Native American farmers and ranchers.

But there are significant differences between the two matters, including that Obama was not part of the lawsuit. And when that settlement was reached, it was submitted to a federal judge.

When District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in D.C. gave it final approval, he wrote that the settlement “was attained following an extensive investigation of the facts and the law.”

In Trump’s case, the administration announced that it had reached a settlement before the federal government even responded to the president’s claims. Ed Whelan, a conservative legal scholar, posted on social media that approval by a judge “provides some process protection against abuses. Here, by contrast, [the] settlement was designed to evade court review.”

This settlement also comes with a ticking clock that ties the fund’s existence to Trump’s presidency.

According to the agreement, the group will stop processing claims by December 2028 and must transfer any remaining money to another federal government account before January 2029 — shortly before Trump’s term ends.