On Monday afternoon, June 1, the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump was "backing off" from his plan to create a $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund" for Americans it claims were unfairly targeted legally by the Biden administration and former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. And the Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would abide by a federal judge's order temporarily blocking the fund. According to former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance — a law professor and frequent legal analyst for MS NOW — the fund's fate is only one of the many legal setbacks the Trump administration has suffered recently.
Vance examines those setbacks in an early June Substack video as well as a Substack column.
Critics of the "anti-weapon fund" are attacking it as a "slush fund" — a description that Vance agrees with. After the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agreed to settle a lawsuit from the Trump administration, DOJ announced the creation of the fund as part of that settlement. President Trump's critics are also saying it is unfair that Trump, according to the settlement, will not be audited by the IRS.
Noting a federal judge's footnotes, Vance, in the video, explained, "This is Footnotes 2 and 3 in the judge's order. The second one, she points out that the settlement that Trump receives conflicts with DOJ policy. She says it may be in conflict; it absolutely is, because, you know, here he is suing over having his taxes released. And instead of a settlement that compensates him for that, there's this huge $1.776 billion slush fund —this incredible slush fund, and also the forgiveness."
Vance continued, "And then, in the third footnote, she really, interestingly, points out that she's aware, because there's been news reporting, on the fact that internally, in the IRS, lawyers prepared a memo that outlined the pushback to Trump's lawsuit. It was, at best, a very weak lawsuit, like many of his cases are, and the IRS wanted to fight it. And the decision was made at a political level to let it go forward and to roll over and enter into this settlement."
Vance predicted that "there's a lot more to come" legally with pushback against the "anti-weaponization fund."
In her Substack article, Vance lays out other legal setbacks that Trump has suffered recently — including cases involving the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's anti-transgender policies with the Pentagon.
"In the Kennedy Center case," Vance explained, "Judge Christopher Cooper held that adding Trump's name to the facility violated the clear language of federal law that requires the building to honor 'President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone'…. The D.C. Circuit enjoined Pete Hegseth from enforcing his anti-trans policy Monday. It was designed to keep transgender people from serving in the military…. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed its motion to dismiss DOJ’s indictment due to vindictive prosecution last week."
