The U.S. Justice Department says it has dropped plans for a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that critics denounced as a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump’s supporters.

But “weaponization” claims will keep coming.

The new fund was expected to offer a faster and easier path to government payouts for people alleging unfair treatment by the Biden administration or other perceived political enemies of Trump. Long before it was announced, though, U.S. officials were fielding such claims — and in some instances approving million-dollar awards of taxpayer money — under a decades-old process set up by Congress.

Untethered to the fund proposal and the bipartisan political firestorm and legal battles that followed, claims brought under the existing legal pathways are moving ahead.

There are hundreds of pending compensation demands from people charged or convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riots as Congress certified Trump’s election loss. A former White House lawyer from Trump’s first term is suing over what he alleges were privacy violations by a congressional committee.

And in a new case, two police officers in Washington are seeking $15 million for what they allege is a “politically-motivated” prosecution, claiming they were “scapegoated” for the death of a Black man during a police pursuit in late 2020. One of the officers was found guilty of second-degree murder and both were convicted of obstruction of justice. Trump pardoned them shortly after he returned to the White House.

“We’re doing this through normal litigation, which is going to be more costly and take more time to litigate, but that’s how it is,” said Jonathan Fahey, an attorney for the officers.

Trump typically uses the term “weaponization” to refer to actions by the Biden administration or other perceived adversaries. When it proposed the new fund, the Justice Department said there would be “no partisan requirements,” but described “weaponization” as “sustained use of the levers of government power by Democrat elected officials, political and career federal employees, contractors, and agents.” It offered specific examples from the Biden administration.

To be sure, federal courts are questioning whether the fund is, in fact, dead. This week, a Virginia judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging the plan refused to accept DOJ’s verbal assurances that it had been dropped, and she said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would have to provide sworn declarations if they wanted to convince her.

The U.S. government is broadly immune against being sued for the actions of officials and employees. But Congress created exceptions through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which dates back to the 1940s. Individuals first file claims directly with agencies, and then can sue if those are denied or they don’t get a response within six months. The government can also be on the hook for opponents’ legal fees in other types of cases if it loses or as part of an agreement.

The government pays for court-imposed judgments or settlements using money from what’s known as the Judgment Fund, which gets taxpayer dollars through a permanent and indefinite appropriation from Congress. It’s managed by a Treasury Department office. While payments are logged in a public database, they don’t always include details about the claims or who is getting the money.

Millions in payouts

Over the past year and a half, the Justice Department made separate $1.25 million settlements in two lawsuits filed by prominent conservatives — Michael Flynn and Carter Page — who echoed Trump’s complaints that federal probes into the 2016 election were “witch hunts.” Other agreements included $4 million to FBI employees who claimed political retaliation under Biden, and more than $1 million to a man acquitted of federal charges that he interfered with access to a Planned Parenthood clinic, also a Biden-era case.

DOJ also agreed earlier this year to pay $500,000 to cover the attorney fees of individuals who were part of litigation accusing the Biden administration of unconstitutionally coercing social media platforms into taking down posts about the COVID pandemic and the 2020 election, according to a copy of the settlement reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund was announced in May as part of a deal to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a leak of his tax information several years ago.

After rare pushback from Republican lawmakers, Blanche told Congress earlier this month the plan would be dropped. But he said a separate part of the deal that gave Trump, his family and businesses immunity from audits and other types of government investigations of past tax filings remains in effect. A Florida federal judge is considering allegations that the whole agreement was the result of a “fraud on the court” because Trump effectively controlled both sides of the IRS case.

After Blanche’s announcement that the fund was scrapped, Trump and senior Republicans in Congress continued to express support for the idea.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.

‘Bad precedent’

The Justice Department hadn’t announced details about how the fund would operate or who would run it by the time officials dropped the plan. Based on the early guidance, though, former Justice Department officials said it seemed designed to remove some of the barriers of the existing process.

The Justice Department routinely “fights very hard” against these types of claims because they don’t want to set “bad precedent” about who is entitled to compensation, said Kali Bracey, a former DOJ official who oversaw such cases. The law places the burden on plaintiffs to prove a government officer did something wrong and has a two-year statute of limitations, she said.

Lawyers involved in existing Jan. 6 lawsuits said they appreciated the idea of the fund but had doubts it would be a better option. When a party sues the government directly, “it isn’t a single pot that they have to argue over and share,” said Thomas Ranieri, who represents former members of the Proud Boys extremist group with a pending lawsuit over their Jan. 6 prosecutions.

Peter Ticktin, who has filed two lawsuits for Jan. 6 defendants and said he expects to bring more, said the fund likely would have benefited people who couldn’t afford the time and money of pursuing claims under the existing process. But he said litigation put his clients in a stronger position.

Without a lawsuit, Ticktin said, “you’re just begging the fund and have no way to have any real bargaining power.”

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