Trump’s slush fund foes clash with court hurdles

Trump’s slush – A lawsuit filed by two D.C. police officers aims to stop a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate alleged victims of the Biden administration—while other legal fights target a separate billion-dollar “ballroom” linked to Trump donors. Pu

For the second time in a week, the fight around Donald Trump’s money machine is moving from Capitol Hill to the courtroom.

Trump’s announced $1.8 billion fund—described by the president as an “anti-weaponization fund” and dubbed by critics as a “slush fund”—is meant to compensate supporters and allies who say they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration. The plan. launched a week before this discussion. is said to include January 6 rioters and insurrectionists who were tried. found guilty. and later pardoned by Trump.

Two D.C.-area police officers—Daniel Hodges. a Metropolitan Police officer who helped protect the Capitol on January 6. and Harry Dunn. a former Capitol Police officer—have gone to court to block the program. Their lawsuit opens with a sweeping claim that “in the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century. President Trump has created a taxpayer funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.” The filing goes on to argue the fund is illegal. insisting “no statute authorizes its creation. ” and that the settlement on which it is premised is “a corrupt sham.” The officers also argue the fund’s design violates the constitution and federal law.

Public Citizen co-president Rob Weissman. who has become a central voice in legal challenges to Trump. said the essence of the lawsuit is correct. “Everything about that statement is correct. ” he said. while adding that he might revise it to reflect that he views it as “probably the most corrupt presidential action in all of American history.”.

Weissman’s reasoning focused on the constitutional limit on paying for insurrection.

He pointed to the 14th Amendment. explaining that it prohibits using federal money to “pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” While he said the authors of the argument likely had Confederate debt in mind. they framed it broadly enough—he said—to cover events like January 6.

If the money is paid to insurrectionists, Weissman argued, it would be unconstitutional. He also suggested the argument could extend further if Trump himself is deemed an insurrectionist. because “this conferment of a benefit on him would be unconstitutional.” And if Trump receives any of the funding. Weissman said it could also violate the Emoluments Clause. because it would be a government gift.

Then there is the settlement language embedded in the fund’s structure.

Weissman described a provision that the government is “forever barred and precluded from prosecuting. pursuing. or examining tax claims against Trump. his sons. the Trump Organization and related companies.” He pressed the breadth of that agreement. noting that the original lawsuit sought damages tied to a leaked Trump personal tax return.

Weissman did not mince words about what he sees as the legal overreach. He said the settlement is “a little broad” and insisted that if it is attempted to be implemented. it is illegal. He said it would also be unlawful for the president to ask the IRS to proceed with an audit or investigation—or to terminate one—and that the same rule applies to others.

In his telling, the law also imposes duties on IRS employees and creates criminal risk. If a sitting Attorney General. Todd Blanche. told people inside the IRS to “stop auditing Trump. ” Weissman said that would be illegal. He added that if IRS personnel are told to stop auditing or to begin auditing someone. they are required by law to report it to the Treasury Department Inspector General. And if they do not, Weissman said they face up to five years of imprisonment.

The question, Weissman said, is not only the legality of the fund. It is whether a court will allow plaintiffs to be heard.

He said criminal law enforcement would fall to the Justice Department—“and this Justice Department obviously will not enforce it,” he argued—though he predicted “there will be another Justice Departments” and future enforcement.

But the standing problem is sharper in his view.

He pointed out that the Supreme Court has made standing difficult in cases where plaintiffs argue “I’m a taxpayer and my money is being taken unjustly.” That, he said, is likely to become “the tough part” of these challenges.

The standing hurdle matters even beyond the slush fund litigation. Weissman said his organization is not involved in the officers’ lawsuit. The slush fund case being discussed. he said. is being brought by the Public Integrity Project. led by Russ Feingold and Zephyr Teachout. along with attorney Brendan Ballou—who previously served as a January 6 prosecutor and resigned from the Justice Department last year after Trump pardoned Capitol riot participants.

Still, Weissman said there is another Trump-linked scheme where his group has been heavily engaged: the billion-dollar “ballroom.”

Public Citizen. Weissman said. has led efforts tied to litigation over a contract that the administration offers donors for the ballroom. The goal. he said. was to get the actual document—“what is the deal they’re being offered?”—and he said they succeeded after obtaining an order compelling the document’s release.

According to Weissman, the contract makes clear that the administration is seeking anonymous donations. He said the word “anonymous” appears 14 times in the short contract.

But anonymity to the public, he said, does not mean anonymity to the White House. In his view, if a donor such as Amazon gives anonymously, “Donald Trump definitely knows about that. And so does everybody else inside the White House.” That. he said. leaves the public unable to determine who is funding what he called a “corrupt and ridiculous ballroom. ” while his group has tried to identify the known corporate donors.

Weissman said that corporate donors publicly revealed amount to “about two dozen” and that they received $279 billion in government contracts in the previous five years. He argued those contributions are not about getting invited to the ballroom but about obtaining more contracts and more government favors.

The wider political struggle is still playing out alongside the court fight.

When asked about Republican opposition to the slush fund, Weissman described it as a fracture point inside the GOP—an overreach that, in his view, could split alliances among those who insist on total Trump loyalty and those who see the move as legally and substantively outrageous.

He said lawmakers around Trump and figures he named—Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone among them—could benefit financially. predicting that “very. very likely” they will end up providing “hundreds of millions of dollars” to Trump and his family based on what Weissman called a “preposterous original legal claim.”.

At the same time, Weissman described frustration within Congress over procedural maneuvering.

He said Republicans were trying to push through a vote in Congress on a spending bill tied to ICE—he cited about $75 billion to ICE—using reconciliation. which he said would avoid a filibuster. In that process, Democrats are permitted to offer amendments. He said Democrats planned to offer amendments saying “no money for the slush fund. ” forcing Republicans to be on record repeatedly—“once. twice. many times.”.

Weissman said that pressure contributed to a pause: Republicans told Trump, “Hey, we got to pause.” As a result, he said, money fast-tracked for the administration priority of funding ICE was delayed for “we don’t know how long” because Republicans worried about the slush fund and lacked a solution.

He said Senate Republicans were also angry at Trump for supporting “some insurgents against people who are Republican incumbents” in the Senate, and that their patience with Trump was “beginning to run thin.”

In the discussion, Weissman emphasized a distinction between the two schemes critics are challenging. Asked whether the billion-dollar ballroom is different from the slush fund. he agreed with the premise that the fund represents taxpayer money used to compensate people he said launched an insurrection and carried out violence against police.

“The slush fund is something categorically different altogether,” Weissman said.

He described the slush fund’s concept—paying people who attacked the government, engaged in violence, threatened members of Congress and even the Republican vice president—as something he said has “no precedent in American history.”

Weissman returned, repeatedly, to why his own legal campaign is shaped the way it is.

He said Public Citizen is “up around 40” lawsuits—“more than one a month,” he said—with an effort to increase toward “one a week.” He framed those suits as a way to make illegal actions stop and also as a signal to people who feel isolated in the face of government overreach.

He argued that lawsuits can be bypassed and that the legal system may not always protect individuals—especially given a “hostile Supreme Court” that, he said, tends to advance the Trump administration’s interests.

That is why he urged street-level action alongside litigation. He said an interconnection exists between legal pressure and public mobilization: the lawsuits can show “fight” when people feel scared, and the protests can help sustain momentum when courts cannot do it all.

As the cases move forward, the immediate stakes remain clear. One scheme seeks to channel federal money into payments tied to January 6 pardons; another—linked to a billion-dollar ballroom—depends on anonymous contributions routed through a contract critics say the public should be able to scrutinize.

And now, the next chapter in both fights depends not just on what is written in the law, but on whether the people trying to stop it can clear the hardest threshold of all.

Trump slush fund anti-weaponization fund January 6 pardons 14th Amendment Emoluments Clause Todd Blanche IRS standing Public Citizen Rob Weissman billion-dollar ballroom anonymous donations ICE spending bill reconciliation amendments CFPB lawsuit NIOSH lawsuit Arlington arch lawsuit