DOJ rejects judge request to certify $1.8 billion fund

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche testifies at a House subcommittee hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice on Capitol Hill earlier this month. The Justice Department rebuffed a judge’s invitation for top officials to submit a signed statement under oath that a $1.8 billion fund for what the administration described as victims of political “weaponization” will not happen. In a filing on Friday, the Justice Department said that such declarations were “unnecessary” and that compelling statements from high-level officials “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.” A department lawyer wrote that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s congressional testimony and submissions to the court from government attorneys already “were made against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity.” U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled last week that a lawsuit challenging the fund can go forward, rejecting the Justice Department’s assurances that past statements from Blanche and other officials that they were dropping the fund plan were sufficient. But the judge indicated that she would be inclined to end the case if she received a declaration to that effect made under penalty of perjury from Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. Brinkema had said that if the government did not submit the confirmation that she believed was necessary, she would set a full schedule for next steps in the legal fight. “The judge’s demand for declarations was an attempt to require her to personally sign-off on any and all future settlements, separate from this non-existent Fund, that the department may make,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. The Virginia judge separately entered an order blocking action on the fund while the litigation is pending, finding that a group of challengers made a strong enough showing at an early phase of the case that the plan was likely unlawful. Democrats and other critics have denounced the proposal as a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s allies. Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents the fund challengers in the lawsuit, said in a statement that it was “telling” that Blanche and other top officials “continue to refuse to say under oath the Slush Fund is dead and won’t operate in the future.” The fund was part of a settlement to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit seeking to hold the Internal Revenue Service liable for a leak of his tax information. Blanche has said the government will honor another part of the deal that immunizes Trump, his family members and his businesses from audits or other federal probes related to past tax filings. Separately, a federal judge in Florida who presided over the IRS case is weighing whether to reopen those proceedings to vet allegations from a group of former federal judges that the settlement was the result of a fraud on the court. The case is Floyd v. Department of Justice, 26-cv-01399, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria). Share your opinion with New Hampshire. Letters to the editor may be up to 250 words. Longer opinions of up to 800 words can be emailed to opinion@unionleader.com along with a headshot.