Skip to contentSkip to site index Today’s Paper Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Supported by SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Blocking Trump’s Fund, Judge Presses for Guarantee It Won’t Move Forward The ruling was the strongest effort to date to hold the administration to its word that its plans to create the fund have actually been set aside.
Listen · 6:58 min President Trump has insisted that he loves the idea of a fund to compensate people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government, including the rioters who were prosecuted for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Alan Feuer By Alan Feuer Reporting from Federal District Court in Virginia A federal judge on Friday barred the Trump administration until further notice from setting up a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government, saying that her order was needed because of mixed messages about the scheme from President Trump.
The ruling by the judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, was the strongest effort to date by anyone in government to hold the administration to its word that the proposal to create the fund had actually been set aside. While Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told Congress last week that the fund would not move forward, Mr.
Trump has been much more circumspect, insisting that he still loves the idea and believes that people who suffered in court at the hands of the government should get financial compensation. Judge Brinkema seized on the president’s statements during a hearing in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., suggesting they left open the possibility that the fund could be brought back to life despite Mr.
Blanche’s promises and assertions made in court papers that the fund was no longer moving forward. “We just don’t have the absolute certainty that this fund won’t rear its head in another form,” she said. Judge Brinkema did, however, give the administration a way out.
She said she would consider rescinding her order if, within a week, the Justice Department sent her a declaration, filed under penalty of perjury, that the fund was dead once and for all. She told Andrew Block, a department lawyer who appeared in court for the government, that the declaration needed to be signed by Mr.
Blanche and Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary. Judge Brinkema’s ruling extended a temporary pause on the fund that she had put in place at the end of May. And it came two days after a federal judge in Washington, Richard J. Leon, refused to issue his own order putting the fund on hold.
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