Federal judge indefinitely blocks Trump’s $1.8 billion payout fund

A federal judge on Friday indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion payout fund, which is still being challenged in court despite Justice Department officials claiming the effort is dead.

At a hearing in Virginia federal court, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction blocking the fund, which the administration sought to create for those who claim they were improperly investigated by the government. She forcefully rejected the government’s arguments that the case was moot, citing Trump’s praising of the idea and acting attorney general Todd Blanche’s unwillingness to say under the penalty of perjury that the administration will not try to stand it up in the future.

She gave the government one week to enter a “clear, unambiguous” declaration in the court record that the fund is dead, at which time she will consider dismissing the case.

A Justice Department attorney argued that he, as an officer of the court, had put in a court filing to Brinkema that the fund has “not been set up and is now not going forward.” But Brinkema said that wasn’t sufficient, making clear that the declaration she desired needed to be signed by the treasury secretary and Blanche for her to see the government’s claim the fund was dead as legitimate.

“We don’t have the kind of absolute certainty that this fund wouldn’t rear its head” again, she said, adding later that the “public interest in this case is very, very strong in my view.”

Brinkema had temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans for the fund in late May after several plaintiffs represented by the group Democracy Forward filed suit and asked the judge in an emergency filing to halt the fund. She ordered the administration to pause its creation and barred them from disbursing the $1.8 billion fund until she could hold a hearing on June 12.

But then last week, Justice Department officials called off the effort themselves – reassuring Brinkema and a D.C. federal judge overseeing a similar legal challenge that the fund has “not been set up and is now not going forward.”

Separately, Blanche told members of Congress that the administration had scrapped plans for the fund after intense and bipartisan political backlash. But he has resisted calls to put that pledge in writing or to publicly amend the agreement that created the fund, an out-of-court deal the president’s personal lawyers struck with the Justice Department to resolve three legal claims Trump had filed against the government.