Stop Trump’s Slush-Fund Boondoggle

National Review Online

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

 

Donald Trump has dropped his $10 billion damages lawsuit against the IRS. What he’s doing instead may be even worse.

 

Back in October, we editorialized against the unseemly spectacle of Trump’s pursuing administrative claims for $230 million in damages against the Justice Department for alleged abuses of his civil rights in its investigations. Even if the claims were valid when he made them, before becoming president, we argued, it is wrong for presidents — to whom DOJ necessarily answers — to direct that agency to pay them money.

 

In January, Trump filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS seeking $10 billion in damages for leaks of his tax returns in 2017–18. The violation of Trump’s rights in this case is real (the leaks were widely publicized, and the leaker was sent to prison), although the requested damages were clearly inflated. The case drew an Obama-appointed judge who questioned whether the suit was so collusive that it didn’t represent an adversarial “case or controversy” giving rise to federal court jurisdiction. She chose liberal lawyers as court-appointed amici to advise her on dismissing it. Trump got the message and abandoned the case on Monday, two days before his response was due.

 

But Trump isn’t done. Immediately on the heels of the dismissal of the IRS suit, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that, as part of a deal to settle that case, DOJ is creating an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion. This is reportedly designed to establish “a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare” under Joe Biden, potentially including defendants in January 6 prosecutions. Blanche’s letter explains that the obviously symbolic $1.776 billion figure “does not represent the value of any claim by Plaintiffs, but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.” Tellingly, the new fund is designed to expire “no later than December 1, 2028,” so all the money will be dispensed by the current administration.

 

This is, de facto, a new government program not authorized by Congress, under the fictional pretense of settling lawsuits that have not been proven in court. The fact that (as Blanche recites) such things have been done in the past by Democrats makes this worse, rather than better. Hard-to-supervise slush funds aimed at financing well-connected political allies are exactly the sort of thing a populist presidency is supposed to end.

 

It also represents a favored tactic of the left: gain control of an institution, “apologize” for what its former leaders did, and use the apology as an excuse to loot the Treasury to pay “reparations.” That’s no more justifiable when the right does it.

 

This may be legal, in the sense that Congress created and funds a permanent Judgment Fund for settling lawsuits against the United States, rather than requiring such settlements to gain case-by-case legislative approval, as was true in the early republic. But there is also nothing in the Constitution that requires Congress to passively let this sort of thing happen.