Acting U.S. Attorney Standard Todd Blanche speaks all the scheme by a press conference hosted with U.S. Secretary of Place of origin Security Markwayne Mullin on unaccompanied minors and prosecuting their sponsors, on the Justice Department, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 11, 2026.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The Department of Justice rebuffed a federal heart of attention on’s request to attest in writing it that’s now now not going to switch forward with its “anti-weaponization fund,” arguing in a submitting Friday that it can perhaps be “unnecessary” and that the request raises “serious separation of powers concerns.”
Dispute Leonie Brinkema final week extended her block of the $1.8 billion fund, which became once planned to compensate purported victims of prosecutorial overreach all the scheme by the Biden administration. She argued verbal claims by DOJ management that the fund wasn’t moving forward were insufficient.
Brinkema gave Acting Attorney Standard Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent a week to file written, sworn declarations that the fund wouldn’t switch forward sooner than she’d conform to dismiss a lawsuit hunting for to dam the fund permanently.
“The Acting Attorney General has testified before Congress that the Fund is ‘not going forward, period’… Undersigned counsel have twice signed briefs reaffirming that ‘the Fund is not going forward,’ and counsel for Defendants has twice said substantially the same thing in open court,” DOJ licensed real Andrew Block wrote in the Friday submitting.
“All these statements were made against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity,” Block wrote.
Blanche beforehand testified to a Dwelling panel that the fund became once now now not moving forward, although he held off on inserting that relate in writing. He became once furthermore now now not below penalty of perjury on the time, MS Now reported.
Following Blanche’s testimony, President Donald Trump mentioned he wished to switch forward with the fund, which Brinkema pointed to as motive to doubt the DOJ’s claims and request sworn declarations from Blanche and Bessent.
In a put up on X later Friday afternoon, the DOJ again pointed to earlier filings in the case the place it mentioned it wouldn’t proceed with the fund, apart from to Blanche’s testimony.
“In essence, 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 DOJ mentioned in the put up. “Judges do not get to insert themselves into the department’s routine settlement authority.”
The DOJ in Could perhaps perhaps just announced it became once growing the fund as section of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Interior Income Provider for the leak of his tax data by an IRS contractor.
The figuring out became once harshly criticized from each and every facet of the aisle over concerns that it can perhaps be used to pay Trump’s allies, in conjunction with these who pleaded responsible to crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol.
