A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization restitution fund Friday after plaintiffs claimed the fund was politically discriminatory because it helped victims of Democrat administrations. The Department of Justice created the fund earlier this month to provide restitution for targets of federal political persecution regardless of political affiliation.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, an appointee of President Bill Clinton with a history of ruling against the Trump administration, temporarily blocked the Justice Department from establishing the fund while Brinkema hears legal arguments.
Andrew Floyd, a fired assistant U.S. attorney and Jan. 6 prosecutor, John Caravello, a professor who was accused and acquitted of assaulting a federal agent, the National Abortion Federation, and far-left nonprofit Common Cause sued the Department of Justice last week to stop the fund.
With seemingly no sense of irony, the plaintiffs’ primary claim is that the fund is politically discriminatory against Democrats, apparently because the lion’s share of potential victims seeking restitution would be conservatives targeted by the Biden and Obama administrations. The plaintiffs’ argument implies that, because Democrat administrations decided to conduct large-scale political persecutions of normal Americans they perceived as their enemies — and there is a much larger number in that victim pool — restitution should not be allowed.
“By its own terms, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by ‘Democrat’ administrations, even though the current administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it,” the lawsuit states. The suit declines to acknowledge how the Biden administration sent its federal thugs after Americans peacefully praying outside abortion facilities, or parents concerned about their children’s public schools, or Catholics who attend Latin Mass, or Jan. 6 protesters who were wildly overcharged and over-sentenced, and much more. It also does not meaningfully mention the Obama administration’s targeting of the Trump campaign, the Russia collusion hoax, or any other abuse that effectively stripped the American people of proper representation in the White House by kneecapping Trump’s first term.
Vice President J.D. Vance has said that the fund is open to anyone who believes he was unfairly targeted by the federal government, explicitly stating it was open to Democrats as well. Each claim, he said, would be decided on a case-by-case basis. A DOJ overview of the fund explicitly states that “Democrats can submit claims, too.” It also notes that the fund is for victims of “use of government power to target them for ‘improper and unlawful’ reasons,” without mentioning a requirement that a particular party have wielded the power.
Floyd, through public statements, may be inadvertently making the case for the fund, as he has been displaying the zeal with which prosecutors like himself wanted to punish Jan. 6 protesters.
“First, hundreds of people attacked the foundation of an ordered society by trying to stop the results of a free and fair election — committing serious assaults on law enforcement and other crimes as they did so,” he said. “Then, this administration pardoned them — removing the accountability that had been hard earned by victims, witnesses, law enforcement, and prosecutors and imposed by impartial jurors and judges. Now they are asking taxpayers to illegally reward them for their crimes.”
Never mind the fact that many Jan. 6 protesters were treated disproportionately mistreated, overcharged, and subjected to a mass arrest effort conducted by the federal government, which essentially sought to target anyone in the vicinity of the protest. Meanwhile, no such effort existed to arrest Black Lives Matter rioters who did significantly more damage and caused the deaths of numerous Americans.
Binkema appears to have bought into the plaintiffs’ arguments for now, and temporarily blocking the fund is in line with her past decisions against the Trump administration.
In 2017, she was one of two judges to block deportations of foreigners who had recently arrived from predominantly Muslim countries. While the nationwide ban on deportations came from Judge Ann Donnelly in New York, Brinkema blocked “the removal of any green-card holders being detained at Dulles International Airport” for seven days, allowing them access to lawyers as well.
Last year, Brinkema ordered the release of a Venezuelan couple who had Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and had been detained by immigration agents, effectively claiming jurisdiction over who is and is not allowed in the United States for herself.
