The Justice Department announced May 18 that it created a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund to compensate Americans who say the federal government was used against them. Democrats called it a racket, a slush fund, and a reward for insurrectionists. The same political class has spent five years paying participants in the 2020 riots — $138 million confirmed across twelve cities, all of it from taxpayers, with none of the guardrails Democrats now say they demand.
Trump gave up something real to create this fund. The lawsuit, filed January 29, 2026, sought at least $10 billion in damages under IRC § 7431, arguing that each view of a news article containing the leaked data constituted a separate statutory violation. Littlejohn, who stole the returns while working as an IRS contractor and leaked them to the New York Times and ProPublica, is serving five years in federal prison — meaning the underlying legal harm was not in dispute. Per the official DOJ press release, Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization dropped that $10 billion claim with prejudice and received a formal apology and no monetary payment of any kind. The $1.776 billion goes not to Trump but into a fund administered by a five-member commission to compensate other Americans who say they were targeted by government overreach. Trump traded a $10 billion personal legal claim to create a fund he gets nothing from. Democrats call that a slush fund.
The fund draws from the federal Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury appropriation the DOJ uses to settle and pay cases. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the fund is open to anyone: “Submission of a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim.” Any money not paid out by December 1, 2028 reverts to the federal government.
The DOJ press release drew an explicit contrast to the Obama administration’s Keepseagle settlement, which put $680 million from the same Judgment Fund into an account managed by a single claims administrator. When claims ran out, more than $300 million in leftover money was distributed to nonprofits and NGOs that had never filed a claim. The Anti-Weaponization Fund prohibits that. Unspent money goes back to Treasury.
None of that stopped the outrage. Rep. Jamie Raskin, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an official statement the fund was “a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists.” Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York called it a “bipartisan” cause to “block the President’s $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off January 6th criminals.” Suozzi and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick introduced legislation to prohibit any federal funds from flowing to the fund. Ninety-three members of Congress filed a court brief challenging it.
Denver paid $18.3 million to participants in the 2020 George Floyd protests and riots, according to Denver7. Aurora added $1.4 million. New York City paid more than $19 million across two class-action settlements — $13 million to roughly 1,300 people arrested or beaten at 18 protests, NBC News reported, plus $6.45 million to demonstrators who said police kettled them in the Bronx and pepper-sprayed them. Los Angeles paid $20 million in protest-related settlements, confirmed by City Controller Kenneth Mejia. Austin paid $20.8 million to fifteen people injured by police during May 2020 demonstrations, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Portland paid $9.1 million, confirmed by the city’s own budget and finance office. Seattle paid $10 million to fifty plaintiffs, per the Seattle Times.
Philadelphia paid $9.25 million to 343 plaintiffs, per the Associated Press. Louisville paid $12 million to the family of Breonna Taylor plus $725,000 to the family of David McAtee, killed during protest curfew enforcement, per Courthouse News and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Chicago paid $5.6 million to settle 32 lawsuits, per a WTTW News analysis. Columbus paid $6.775 million across multiple settlements, per the Columbus Dispatch and city council records. That is $138 million confirmed from twelve cities. The Guardian documented at least nineteen cities paying more than $80 million as of 2023, before Austin’s later settlements and Portland’s final totals were in. The true national figure is higher.
None of those city funds had a sunset date. None had a reversion clause returning unspent money to taxpayers. None sent quarterly reports to any oversight body. None required congressional consultation before a dime was paid. The riots those settlements arose from caused nearly $2 billion in property damage nationwide, per the Associated Press. Most businesses absorbed their losses and received nothing.
The DOJ fund has all the constraints the city payouts lacked. The politicians demanding Congress block it helped run the cities that wrote the checks.
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