Tangle - The DOJ's anti-weaponization fund.

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that, as part of the settlement agreement in President Donald J. Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, it would create a new fund that could “issue formal apologies and monetary relief” to individuals and entities who claim to have suffered from lawfare and DOJ weaponization. The anti-weaponization fund will receive $1.776 billion from the federal government’s judgment fund used to settle and pay other cases. Five people, appointed by the Attorney General, will oversee the new fund; one of the five must be chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. We want to see you in person soon!Early-bird VIP tickets have sold out for our event in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, but you can get a few general admission tickets left after early bird sales, which you can find here. If you want to read Isaac’s speech in full — and access all future Friday editions, Sunday editions, and ad-free daily newsletters — become a Tangle member today for just $6/month!Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today's “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think about the anti-weaponization fund? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the creation, the Department of Justice's Anti-Weaponization Fund by President Donald Trump. We're going to break down exactly what happened. Share some views from. the left and the right, and then I'll be on with my take today. All right, with that, I'm going to hand it over to Lindsay Canuth, who's here with me on the pod today, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac.

Let's get into today's quick hits. Number one. On Monday, three people were killed at a mosque in San Diego, California by two shooters who fled the scene before killing themselves. Law enforcement officials are investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Number two, President Donald Trump said there was a very good chance that the U.S. and Iran could come to a deal to end the current war and prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. The comments came hours after the president reportedly postponed planned strikes on Iran following pressure from other Middle East leaders. Number three, Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China on Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping just a week after President Trump's visit to China.

Putin and Xi will reportedly discuss trade and other international issues. Separately, Russia's nuclear chief said the Zaporizia nuclear power plant is near the point of no return following Ukrainian strikes near the plant. Number four, the U.S. State Department announced new sanctions against 11 Cuban officials it described as, quote, Cuban regime-aligned actors, unquote, as tensions rise between the two countries. Number five, President Trump announced that Trump RX, the government program offering lower pricing on certain medications, would expand to include 600 new generic drugs. Number six, a brush fire dubbed the sandy fire broke out in Simi Valley, California on Monday. The fire has spread to more than 1,300 acres, prompting evacuation orders across Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Justice Department has now set up a fund paid for in taxpayer money, $1.8 billion, what the president calls an anti-weaponization fund to compensate Trump allies, including the rioters on January 6th.

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that, as part of the settlement agreement and President Donald J. Trump, the Internal Revenue Service, it would create a new fund that would, quote, issue formal apologies and monetary relief, unquote, to individuals and entities who claim to have suffered from lawfare and DOJ weaponization. The anti-weaponization fund will receive $1.776 billion from the DOJ's judgment fund, use to settle and pay other cases. Five people, appointed by the Attorney General, will oversee the new fund. One of the five must be chosen in consultation with Congress.

leadership. In January 2026, President Trump, his son's Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump organization sued the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion over alleged leaks of confidential tax information in 2019 and 2020. On Monday, Trump settled that lawsuit in exchange for the creation of the Anti-Waponization Fund and a formal apology from the government. Additionally, the president is withdrawing two other complaints he previously filed against the government. administrative claims over the Federal Bureau of Investigation's search of Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and the investigation into Russian collusion during his 2016 presidential campaign. The new fund will provide monetary relief to claimants who allege they were politically targeted by the Justice Department

under previous presidential administrations, and the settlement creating the fund did not contain any language specifying congressional or judicial review. Instead, it will be required to report the sum of its disbursements and its recipients to the Attorney General on a quarterly basis. Applicants can choose to file claims, and there is no partisan requirement to file. The fund will process claims until December 1st, 2028, just before the end of President Trump's term. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cited past litigation, such as the Keeps-Seggle settlement, as precedent for the creation of the anti-wapidization fund. In Keepsigel, the DOJ, under the direction of President Obama, transferred the unclaimed portion of a class action settlement into a fund designated to

compensate Native Americans who were unfairly denied access to Department of Agriculture, credit, and loan services. In the DOJ press release announcing the fund, Blanche said, quote, the machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again, unquote. Democrats have criticized the settlement, claiming the anti-wapidization fund is nothing more than a slush fund for the Trump administration's political allies. In a statement, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee,

called the fund, quote, a fraud on the American taxpayer to line the pockets of his mega political allies, unquote. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the right is saying about the fund. The right critiques the fund, with some describing it as a more brazen version of the left's past dealings.

Others say it takes executive authority too far. Some on the right support the fund as an avenue for redress. In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said the fund takes a page from the left's playbook. While the fund doesn't stink on ice quite as visibly as Trump getting the taxpayers to pay him, it nonetheless looks a lot like collusive operation to create a slush fund to pay off friends and political allies. And in doing so, it expends nearly $2 billion in taxpayer money that Congress never appropriated. The classic Trump modus operandi is to look at something crooked that has done smoothly and quietly through sophisticated lawyering on the left

and then imitate it while saying all the quiet parts out loud. This is another instance. Using legislative appropriations and programs to line the pockets of allied groups as an old standby of Democrats, but so is laundering aid to friends and allies through the judicial system,

often with the knowledge that a part of it gets kicked back. Congress should reclaim its authority over large payments made by the executive branch, and our system should also reject collusive uses of the court system when they don't involve Trump. The Washington Post editorial board argued that the Trump administration is stretching executive authority to a breaking point.

If this stands, it will become a template for all future American presidents to shower financial benefits on friends and allies without accountability. The fund will be under the control of five people appointed by the Attorney General. They can be fired at will by Trump, meaning the money can only go to people the president sympathizes with. The money will presumably flow to conservative figures investigated or prosecuted during the Biden years, but people who are victims of malicious prosecution can seek recompense through the normal legal process. If that process is too onerous, Congress can change the law. The new model of compensation the Trump administration just invented

lacks normal legislative and judicial checks. Conservatives rightly blasted the use of sue-and-suttle tactics employed by progressive groups during the Obama administration. Trump is exploiting the legal system in the same way, but the conflict is far more overt because the lawsuit being settled was filed by Trump himself. In PJ Media, Catherine Salgado said President Trump prioritized American search for justice. It will be interesting to see how many people take advantage of this fund in the coming months. The Biden administration targeted thousands of people unfairly, from the

January 6ers to pro-lifers, to traditional Catholics, to Trump allies. To give just one example, former FBI director Chris Ray admitted to the House Judiciary Committee in July 2023 that the Biden-era spying on and targeting of concerned parents at school board meetings was not based on evidence. Representative Kevin Kiley asked Ray if there had been an increase in harassment and threats of violence, spurring the investigation into dissatisfied parents who objected to radically woke and sexualized curricula. Ray confessed, I'm not aware of any such evidence. In other words, that weaponization was purely based on Democrats' ideological opposition

to parental rights, not on evidence of violence. Now, victims of such injustice have a way of seeking redress. Here's what the left is saying about the anti-weaponization fund. The left rebukes the fund, with many saying President Trump's actions violate the separation of powers. Some see the fund as an important example of how Trump maintains his base. Others say it makes upcoming elections difficult for Republican candidates. In The Daily Beast, David Gardner asked, if we cannot rely on America's rule of law, what do we have left?

By forcing through a self-serving settlement in his $10 billion case against the Internal Revenue Service, Trump has dangerously blurred the separation of powers that has governed the United States through 46 presidencies, including his own first term. The blatancy leaves you breathless because in Trump's IRS lawsuit, He was effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant, and by manipulating the proceedings, he ended up being the judge. Judge Kathleen M. Williams was reportedly considering dismissing Trump's lawsuit for the simple reason that his personal lawyers were bringing the case, and his government lawyers were responding to it. But the judge was rendered helpless on Monday

when Trump announced he was withdrawing his lawsuit. Trump has already shown his disdain for elections he doesn't win and Supreme Court decisions he doesn't agree with. Now he is running roughshod through the legal system. In the new republic, Greg Sargent suggested the fund might serve as a form of coalition management. This saga captures something essential about how the political economy of Trumpism really functions. It helps explain why his supporters stick by him through one episode after another

of the most corrupt self-dealing we've seen from any U.S. president in modern history. For Trump, there's no such thing as justice or injustice. Outcomes reflect power and nothing more. Who is winning and who is losing, who is dominant, and who is supplicant. The fund is overseen by people who can hand out the loot with no transparency,

people whom Trump can fire for any reason, say, for not giving money to whoever Trump wants them to give it to, including his army of insurrectionists. Payments will keep large swaths of his coalition persuaded that a win for Trump, no matter how illicit or ill-gotten, is a win for them, that his corruption isn't just in his own interests, but in theirs, too, because after all, they're getting a cut of the spoils. In USA Today, Chris Brennan said Republicans are stuck with Trump's billion-dollar scams. Imagine being a Republican in Congress right now, seeking another term and November's midterm elections as President Donald Trump drops like a stone in public opinion

polling, dragging his party down with him. Those Republicans were already going to face questions from voters about Trump's weird obsession with building a $1 billion ballroom at the White House. And now they will also have to justify Trump creating a $1.776 billion slush fund to enrich his allies, who had to face the indignity of being held accountable by law. The war in Iran is at an expensive standstill. The price of gasoline is above $4.50. Inflation is surging again. but Trump is focused only on what really matters to him, retribution and building monuments to himself. Republicans in Congress are handcuffed to Trump and his troubles.

That is what the right and left had to say about the anti-wapidization fund. Now I'm going to pass it back to Isaac for his take. Isaac, over to you. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. A little more than two weeks ago, I published this 6,000-word podcast exploring all the different self-dealing and potential corruption

from the first 15 months of President Donald Trump's administration. Had the peace been scheduled for this week, the Trump-D-OJ fund story certainly would have made the cut, and might have even headlined it. The arc of how the Justice Department ended up with a cheekly priced $1.776 billion fund for the Trump administration to dole out is remarkable in the worst possible way.

In October, the president sought $230 million in damages against the Justice Department for alleged abuses of his civil rights in pursuing partisan investigations into him. Trump actually had a leg to stand on with that initial lawsuit. He was not the president when he filed the claims, and the foundation of at least one of those investigations, the Russia collusion story, was itself the subject of great scrutiny for all manner of violations.

There's no need to relitigate it here, but the FBI's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign was seriously flawed, suing the federal government is one path towards resolution for the aggrieved party. Of course, the problem is that Trump then became president and continued to not just pursue those damages, but inflate them. A year into his second term, he filed a federal lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages for his leaked tax returns. Again, this was a response to a real harm, maybe even a crime. Those returns were leaked. But a government contractor did the leaking and even went to prison. for it. Trump sued the IRS itself, claiming the agency didn't do enough to stop the leaks from happening. The president, obviously, is not the first person to have his tax return leaks, but here is where things get brazenly corrupty and self-dealing. He is the first person to seek $10 billion in damages for that. And he's definitely the first person to seek that compensation while also overseeing the Justice Department responsible for doling out that money.

then when he was staring down the likely prospect of this lawsuit being thrown out of court because our court system recognized the absurdity of a president effectively suing his own government and then paying himself billions of dollars of taxpayer money, Trump's legal team pivoted. They withdrew their own lawsuit, settled with themselves indirectly, and created the fund to pay out cash to other victims of government weaponization. Now, rather than giving himself $10 billion, Trump has granted himself nearly $2 billion to pay out to anyone who claims the government was weaponized against them. We're all numb to numbers like this now, but I'm still wrapping my head around $2 billion.

It's enough money to fund the entire annual budget of a mid-sized city like St. Louis or Indianapolis. You could pay over 20,000 school teachers for a full year or provide Medicaid coverage for 300,000 people for a year. Instead, the roughly $2 billion fund will be overseen by a board of five attorney general pick people whom the president can fire any time. So the president is in full control of where and to whom the money goes, and he's made it clear that it will go

to his aggrieved supporters. It feels like a millennium ago when we were debating whether Trump would pardon January 6 rioters. He did, and now he's positioned himself to give them cash too. Some writers on the right have argued that the left has given money

to political allies for years. Dan McLaughlin, under what the right is saying, put it like this, quote, The classic Trump modus operandi is to look at something crooked that is done smoothly and quietly by the left through sophisticated lawyering on the left and then imitate it while saying all the quiet parts out loud. There's wisdom here, and this is a flavor we've seen before. Perhaps most egregiously under President Barack Obama, the EPA would invite lawsuits against regulations that couldn't change, then immediately choose to settle those lawsuits, doling out cash and favorable regulatory changes to get what it would. wanted while bypassing Congress. Yet the same flavor does not mean the same. A single toac

chocolate bar can cost as much as $500, but it isn't the same as a $4 box of cocoa puff cereal because the two tastes like chocolate. The EPA settled lawsuits for tens of thousands of dollars and altered obscure environmental rules about, say, endangered birds. It's unlikely President Obama was directly overseeing these settlements, much less taking cash, but rather than that turning a blind eye to what his agency heads were doing. Trump, on the other hand, is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund of taxpayer money that he directly oversees and controls, and which he can use to cover administrative services, funds, facility, staff, travel, and other support services for whatever the anti-weaponization fund ends up going to. The administration has been using its own

counter-example to claim precedent here, the Keepssegal case, which is a class settlement, the Obama administration reached with Native American farmers for $680 million. This is not the same flavor, though. That lawsuit was brought over systematic discrimination by the USDA. It went to court, and the settlement was approved by a judge. After all eligible parties received their payments, the remaining amount was then dispersed through grants to the same affected community, Native Americans being denied loans they were eligible for.

In contrast, Trump is completely bypassing the judicial and court system. by withdrawing the case and creating this fund, ensuring that none of the claimants or harm is reviewed by a court. This might be the part where you ask, is this legal? And the answer is actually, maybe. Trump is accessing the Justice Department's judgment fund, an uncapped fund Congress created to allow the department

to settle lawsuits against the United States. At the same time, Congress has the power to step in and say, the president doesn't get to use $2 billion for a slush fund for his political allies. Will Congress do that? The answer is probably not, since Congress is currently controlled by Republicans who understandably live in fear of crossing Trump and do not seem to care much at all about controlling the purse, reigning in wasteful spending, or preventing new presidential absurdities from becoming precedent. Should Congress step in and stop this?

The answer is definitively, yes. Standing up to Trump's obvious self-dealing is not only a necessity in principle, but failure for Congress to act now will mean Trump just wrote the blueprint for future presidents to do the exact same thing and point back to this administration as the precedent. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. Next up is your questions answer.

This one's from Erez in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Hey, Eras. He says, What do you make of this New York Times piece by Nick Christoph about rape in Israeli prisons, namely the extraordinary claim with far from extraordinary evidence that dogs were used to rape prisoners. Do you think this is due to a flawed editorial process? And if so, do you think it applies the news desk as well? Okay, so upfront, yes, I'm very skeptical of the story about dogs raping Palestinian prisoners. It's hard to even talk about this. Like, it's such a, it's so dark and awful.

I mean, the whole story and all the stuff that surrounds it is, yeah, it's hard to talk about. The chain of custody for that story, though, it's long and winding. The times of Israel did a great piece on it. It seems to be built on numerous anonymous and unverified claims. Now, I know some people will say those claims are anonymous or unverified because people seek retribution against Palestinians who come out and talk about this stuff. And that might be true. But it's still anonymous and as far as I know, unverified claims.

The most viral moment for the dogs raping Palestinians came from Israeli writer Shail Benafriam, who alleged to have confirmed the story with an Israeli source, though he later said his claims were still unverified. A post from Benafriam on X was actually one of the citations Christoph used in his piece. To say I was surprised that the Times allowed Christoph to use Benefriam as a source would be a massive understatement. I vividly remember when Benefriam first seemed to be transitioning from analyst to activist. I thought about inviting him on this show, The Tangle Podcasts, and then I looked into his background and decided he wasn't reliable after, in a dark irony, finding a series of sexual assault allegations against him, which he's admitted to. He now raises money on his ex-account that he claims

goes to Gaza genocide survivors, though I honestly have no idea if that's true. Both Benifriam and Christoph cite other sources in their claims of dogs being used to abuse prisoners, including reports from Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the BBC, and Al Jazeera. On one hand, each relies on anonymous allegations, and there are some rather crude anatomical questions that cast doubt on this story. On the other hand, the most solid evidence they point to came from prisoners at an Israeli detention camp. Israel blocked at least one UN investigation from examining claims of sexual violence against Palestinians in that prison, which should obviously invite more scrutiny. To me, the New York Times is still trustworthy, though, and they, along with other stalwart publications

like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times or Time Magazine, they are miles ahead of what you'd find from online influencers. I once freelance a piece for Time Magazine and the fact checking was unbelievably arduous. Single paragraphs took weeks to get approval. Not every story or outlet operates that way, but the big ones with many layers of editorial guidelines, they generally do. So, how did this claim get through? I presume, in part, because it was under the opinion section, and Christoph was transparent about his source. It's telling that the New York Times Newsdesk has never reported these claims as verified facts. I doubt allowing Benefriam to be used as a source was a fact-check error, as much as an editorial decision to let Christoph's link source stand on its own,

which would be a manifestation of some latent anti-Israel bias among the decision makers in the editorial section. Putting all of this aside, I do want to say, I think Christoph's story highlighted mostly well-sourced and horrifying examples of prisoner abuse, and it is a worthwhile story to discuss. I appreciated the perspective offered by Israeli writer and former Tangle podcast guest, Haviv Reddegger, who urged his audience to acknowledge abuses by Israeli soldiers but not to elevate on verified claims. Abuse in Israeli prisons is real, as it is in prisons all over the world, and it's something Israeli citizens have themselves been incensed about. I don't think Christoph is a bad guy for writing the piece. I just think he has very strong feelings about the

issue which blinded him and his editors to the unlikely aspects of this story. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to Lindsay for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. I'm jumping back in with today's Under the Radar Story. On Wednesday, May 13th, divers conducting a routine maintenance survey of the Converse Reservoir Dam in Mobile County, Alabama, discovered a grenade type and provised explosive device in the reservoir, which supplies drinking water to the city of Mobile and the surrounding area. Law enforcement, including local officials in the FBI, responded to the discovery and were able to safely detonate the device. The dam

and reservoir are federally designated critical infrastructure, and the IED's origin is currently unknown. Mobile area water and sewer system alerted the Department of Homeland Security and is cooperating with the ongoing investigation. CNN has the story, and we'll link it in today's show notes. Finally, here's today's Have a Nice Day story. Three months ago, Ernesto Gile Hernandez saved up $500 in sure money to buy his first 3D printer. Today, the 10-year-old from Brownsville, Texas, runs prestige 3D labs, three printers, a retail partnership with a local clothing store, and $1,500 in profit. He prints keychains, fidget toys, and custom designs for customers across the Rio Grande Valley,

fitting in jobs between school and football practice. Ernesto said, quote, I just like doing it because I want to invest in a house for my mom and me when I grow older. KRGV Rio Grande Valley has the story, and we'll link it in today's show notes. All right, everyone, that is it for today's episode. If you would like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com, where you you can sign up for a newsletter membership, a podcast membership, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow.

For Isaac and everyone else, this is Lindsay Canuth, signing off. Have a wonderful day. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Andre Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership,

please visit our website at retangle.com.