The Trump administration dropped plans for a fund to compensate people who say they were unfairly prosecuted, but several lawsuits are ongoing.
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A federal magistrate judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must identify the people who came up with the idea for a now-defunct $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were unfairly investigated by the Justice Department.
The ruling came as part of an ongoing lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. A former federal prosecutor who was fired by the Trump administration and other plaintiffs challenged the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as an unconstitutional giveaway of taxpayer dollars designed to benefit President Donald Trump’s political supporters.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche issued orders establishing the fund in May and scrapping it last month, after the proposed payouts spurred a bipartisan backlash in Congress. But several lawsuits over the plan remain pending in the federal courts. The case playing out in Virginia is the only one to have reached the legal discovery phase, in which the parties exchange evidence to prepare for trial.
Over the repeated objections of the Justice Department, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan D. Davis ruled Friday that the identities of those who conceived of the fund’s structure must be disclosed to the plaintiffs and their attorneys at the Democracy Forward Foundation.
“Who came up with it? That’s what conception means,” Davis said.
However, those disclosures may become public only if the case reaches the trial stage. Davis said the attorneys should proceed “as if a protective order is already in place,” meaning that any evidence exchanged in discovery must be kept under wraps before trial.
The Justice Department is appealing Davis’s ruling to U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who is presiding over the case. The department also has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit altogether, arguing that the plaintiffs never had standing to sue and that Blanche has since stated definitively in sworn testimony to Congress and in a signed order that the fund is dead. Brinkema has not yet ruled on that request.
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For weeks, Justice Department attorneys resisted demands to identify the people who conceived of the fund, trying several different legal arguments to prevent such disclosures. Davis rejected all of them.
A department attorney, Andrew Block, suggested at court hearings and in legal filings that the names were “irrelevant” to the case and shielded from disclosure because they involved privileged attorney-client discussions or internal deliberations by government officials. However, the Justice Department has not formally invoked those privileges in court.
“They seemed hesitant to disclose the names of the people involved in this work,” Aman George, an attorney for Democracy Forward, said at Friday’s hearing, describing negotiations with the Justice Department over the scope of evidentiary requests. “The names of attorneys, by itself, is simply not a piece of privileged information.”
George said the identities were essential to the case. Without them, attorneys wouldn’t have a complete view of whose records to request or whom to interview in depositions. As it stands, the Justice Department has so far identified five administration officials who were involved in the effort: Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, IRS chief executive Frank Bisignano and acting deputy attorney general Trent McCotter.
Davis also ruled that the Justice Department must turn over to the plaintiffs any relevant evidence from January 2025 through Friday, denying a Justice Department request for a shorter time frame that would have ended on May 23, the day after the lawsuit was originally filed. That ruling is also being appealed to Brinkema, Block said.
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