The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump creates $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization fund’

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

President Trump is creating a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who say they were victims of the “weaponization” of the Justice Department. We discuss who could get payouts and who makes that call. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, Supreme Court and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department in Supreme Court. And I'm Domenica Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're talking about a new Justice Department fund that could send more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money to January 6 defendants and other Trump allies. Carrie, this pot of money is being called an anti-weaponization fund. Tell us more about exactly what's happening here. The Justice Department announced this week that it was creating a fund of $1.776 billion, that's 1776, the year the country was founded, to compensate people who have suffered from government weaponization. And this fund is going to be overseen by five commissioners that the acting attorney general, a former personal lawyer to President Trump, will appoint. What we understand at this point, the president will have the power to remove those commissioners. commissioners without any cause given. So the details are a little murky at present, but we now know we have a pool of almost $2 billion of taxpayer funds waiting for people to apply. Okay, that's a lot of money. And as you mentioned, this was announced this week, but how did we actually get to this point? I know this isn't the first development here. Yeah, it's kind of been a slow role all year. What happened was in January, President Trump filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns by a federal contractor back in 2019, and the president asked for

$10 billion from the government. It created an ethical outcry. The case had been kind of moving slowly through the courts, and then the judge, the federal judge in Florida, started to ask some tough questions about whether there was really a controversy if President Trump was suing the same government he leads, wasn't he? In other words, the plaintiff and the defendant in this case. And if so, it really wasn't something she could manage as a case. The judge set a deadline for Wednesday of this week for the Trump legal team to respond to some of those questions about whether there was really a division or a separation between the president and the IRS in this case. And instead of responding, Trump's lawyers filed a

notice to voluntarily dismiss the case. And in connection with the that dismissal. A few hours later, the Justice Department announced the creation of this huge nearly $2 billion fund to compensate people who suffered harm, they say, as a result of government weaponization. Okay. Do we know anything more about specifically who's eligible for money under this $1.7 billion fund? Is it just anyone who feels the government has wronged them in some way? Are there any specifics that we know? The acting attorney general Todd Blanche has been on Capitol Hill today, and he got asked a lot of questions from Democratic senators about who would be eligible to apply for this weaponization fund. He basically said anyone's eligible to apply. He said it wasn't limited to people who were prosecuted under the Biden administration or prosecuted by the former special counsel, Jack Smith, or even the January 6th defendants who stormed the Capitol.

President Trump got asked a question about this too earlier in the week. This is reimbursing people that were horribly treated, horribly treated. It's anti-weaponization. They've been weaponized. They've been, in some cases, imprisoned wrongly. I mean, Domenico, I'm curious about how Americans perceive this idea that President Trump talks about a lot, that the Justice Department has been weaponized against Americans that it is weaponized under the Biden administration, and specifically that it was weaponized to prosecute people who entered the Capitol on January 6th. Do people agree with him? Because I do feel like that is going to defundated.

a little bit how people feel about a fund like this. You know, we've been polling on this with Marist since January 6, 2021. And what we've seen is the further away that we've gotten from the event itself, from the siege at the Capitol, you've seen Republicans soften and listen to kind of taking what Trump has said and really use that as their talking points in many respects. You know, in our latest survey from last year, 61% of Republicans said that what happened on January 6th was a protest by patriots to stop a stolen election. On the other hand, though, 59% overall said it was an insurrection to overthrow a free and fair election. And that included 61% of independence, 84% of Democrats. So the split that we continue to see where Democrats and independents are

aligned overwhelmingly on any raft of topics versus Republicans who see things a completely wholly different way. It's really quite something to see, especially the further we've gotten away from this. And when it comes to Trump pardoning January 6th defendants, 62% of people said that they disapprove of Trump's pardons. And again, though, very similar split. Democrats, 89% disapprove independence. 62% disapprove Republicans. 64% approve. And it's really amazing, considering that you had a handful of Republicans in the Senate, in the House, who did vote for Trump's impeachment over January 6th and then given Trump's strength with the Republican base, a lot of them have retreated, especially considering a lot of those members are no longer

in Congress because they spoke out against the president. Well, I'm curious, Carrie, how the rest of the legal world is also responding to a fund like this. Has anyone come out with thoughts? A lot of thoughts, Miles, almost too many to mention. But really, no one has ever seen anything like this. Even the acting attorney general Todd Blanch said today, it's true that this is unusual and it is unusual.

Donald Sherman, who leads the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and Washington Watchdog Group, basically said this is among the most corrupt acts in American history. Almost 100 Democrats in Congress tried to intervene in this Florida IRS lawsuit at the last minute

basically arguing that the deal was usurping the of Congress to appropriate funds, but it was too late in the game for them to weigh in here. And many other experts are talking about how this appears to be an ethical morass for the Trump administration. The acting attorney general Todd Blanche, of course, was a personal lawyer to President Trump. One of the other lawyers who signed off on this in the Justice Department, Stanley Woodward, actually represented multiple defendants, charged in connection. with the capital riot five years ago. And so they were both appointed by President Trump into

their current jobs. And it's just a, it's just a bit of a mess at this point. Getting to this idea of exactly how unprecedented this actually is in the press release announcing this new fund, the Department of Justice pointed to a Obama-era program as something comparable. Can you explain that? Yeah. The Justice Department's that there is precedent for creating this kind of massive fund. And they pointed to a settlement in the Obama years involving a class action lawsuit filed by Native American farmers who said they had been suffering discrimination for decades.

Those people had actually sued as part of a big class. A judge reviewed that settlement for fairness and ultimately approved that pot of money which is much less than this pot of money in this anti-weaponization fund. And of course, in this new fund, there was no judicial oversight. And people were not really suing individually. The way this case came about, of course, was the president's own lawsuit against the government he's leading. And so Democrats and many others are saying this is not really a comparable situation. Moreover, even some conservative voices are speaking out about it.

People like Ed Whalen, who worked in the George W. Bush Justice Department and clerk for the conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, he's been raising questions about this all along, wondering why you couldn't just pause this lawsuit until Trump left the White House. Last night he posted on social media, it's a safe bet this new fund is going to generate some outrageous abuses. You know, this is though, Miles, just a shattering of norms that we're going to. we've continued to see by Trump in this second term, despite the false what-aboutism that he's trying to do with comparing to this Obama administration settlement. You know, again, Trump here taking a shortcut. No judge reviewed this, as Kerry said. Justice departments have traditionally had a degree of independence from the White House. presidents have gone through pains to show that they are not putting a thumb on the scale, especially after Nixon and Watergate. And this administration with Trump at the helm just doesn't care about any of that stuff because he feels he can get away with it with his base.

And certainly the polling bears that out. But the rest of the country just doesn't buy any of that. Okay. Well, we can leave it there for now. Let's take a quick break and more in just a moment. And we're back. So I want to talk now about accountability for this. giant fund of money. Carrie, do we know exactly how this is going to be spent or will there be

transparency into where this $1.7 billion is actually going? The Justice Department guidelines that they issued this week basically say that every fiscal quarter, the commission that's going to oversee this pot of money is going to send a report to the attorney general. But there's no way to be sure that that information will make its way to the public. And in fact, The acting attorney general said today that because of privacy concerns, he's not sure exactly what will become available for public scrutiny. And that's raising another host of questions about how this pot of money is going to be used and the ways in which people or organizations are going to get access to the money.

I mean, is this all a done deal? Are there any potential challenges left for people who are angry or worried about where this is headed? It's going to be really hard to find somebody who has standing. to sue who suffered a real injury as a result of the way this all went down. The simplest way to stop this from happening is for members of Congress to stand up and pass legislation or pass a resolution or refuse to take some action to dole out money to the Justice Department or other parts of the Trump administration. And I've been listening really closely this morning to the reaction on Capitol Hill to Todd Blanche's testimony. And while Democrats have raised some serious

questions about the creation of this fund and the transparency surrounding it. Not very many Republicans so far are raising tough questions. And so as a result, it's not clear that there'll be enough votes, simple math, in Congress to stop this in its tracks. Yeah, Domenico, I feel like any time we talk about the potential for congressional oversight right now, that it just doesn't feel very likely, does it? No, because a lot of Republicans just are not going to go along with something that, puts them in jeopardy of coming under fire from Trump. I mean, we've seen it just in the elections in these past few days. I mean, you know, Senator Bill Cassidy, an incumbent who voted for Trump's impeachment and has stood up against some of what health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has wanted

to do as it relates to vaccines and the like, grilling him and all of that. You know, he wound up going down in his primary in Louisiana after Trump opened up a challenge to him, back to Challenger in his race. He didn't even make it to the runoff. Somebody who's, you know, been an incumbent senator. It's super rare for that to happen. And then tonight we've got a primary in Kentucky where more than $30 million has been spent in a house primary the most ever on TV ads to target Thomas Massey, a Republican in Kentucky, because Massey had tried to force the release. release of the Epstein files and has gone against Trump on a lot of other things and been a real thorn in Trump's side. And this is just really all part of Trump's continued, really,

retribution campaign against a lot of people and entities. Well, that's what I guess there's some part of me that is surprised. I've never heard of a fun like this. But at the same time, Domenico, this does kind of align with Trump's campaign message in 2024 in terms of anti-weaponization of government, what he perceived as weaponization of government. So I guess in that's, in that. sense. Is there some aspect of this that isn't surprising? Well, I wouldn't say it's surprising, but it's still shocking, right, in some respects to the system, because this is not something we've ever seen before from a president to use the full weight and force of the federal

government to go and really weaponize the government to go after, whether it's media members, law firms, universities, political opponents. That's not something that we've seen in this kind of coordinated way with millions of dollars spent to try and go after them. Now, Trump would say that he's the one who was targeted, and that's why he's going after people for quote-unquote justice. But most people don't believe that. Where do you think this goes from here, Carrie? What else are watching? You know, I'm going to watch and see who gets appointed on this commission to oversee this fund. And whether we begin to hear from the recipients of the fund, who's getting money and how much? Because we already know that some of the January 6 defendants who have

received pardons have been talking about suing the government or making administrative claims against the government in connection with their incarceration or their legal bills. And so some of these people are not really very quiet and I expect some of them to be crowing in public about the money they're receiving. Interestingly enough, the former pardon attorney at the Justice Department, Ed Martin, who's been a supporter of some of these January 6 defendants posted on social media just in the last several hours. The lesson of the last few days is to never stop fighting, never stand down, never disarm, and follow the lead of President Trump. I mean, if that is the lesson, Domenico, doesn't that immediately raise questions about

future elections? Of course it does. You know, Trump is clearly going to undermine elections that don't go his way. He's already shown that he's, not only willing to do it, he does it. And a lot of people who have run and lost have done the same thing. And, you know, in fact, it was funny because Cassidy, in losing his primary, kind of took a dig, subtle dig at Trump and saying that, you know, when you lose, you don't pout and whine, you admit the fact that you suffered a defeat. All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Gary Johnson. I cover the Justice Department in the Supreme Court.

And I'm Domenico Montaner. I'm senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.