The Department of Justice told a federal judge on Friday that it will not produce sworn declarations from three senior officials confirming the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is dead, arguing that the court has no business compelling testimony from Cabinet members and that its prior unsworn statements should be enough.
The filing, submitted by Andrew Block, senior counsel to Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, landed on the docket in the Eastern District of Virginia on the same day federal courts closed for the Juneteenth holiday. Judge Leonie Brinkema is not expected to respond until Monday at the earliest.
At stake is a straightforward question the DOJ keeps answering everywhere except under oath: Is the fund finished or not? The administration says yes. It just won't swear to it.
Brinkema issued her order the previous Friday, giving Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Woodward seven days to declare under penalty of perjury that the fund would not move forward, "to avoid any further litigation." She had already indefinitely blocked the fund from operating.
Instead of declarations, DOJ sent a legal brief. Block wrote that the demand crossed a constitutional line.
"Such declarations are unnecessary and the compelled testimony of senior officials from the Executive Branch implicates serious separation of powers concerns."
Block added that prior DOJ statements were "made against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity," and that "there is no reason why declarations should affect the Court's mootness analysis. Nor is there any basis for the court to compel testimony from the Associate Attorney General and two Cabinet members."
In other words: We already told you the fund isn't happening. Take our word for it, just don't ask us to take an oath on it.
Blanche announced the anti-weaponization compensation fund in mid-May, shortly after the Trump family reached a settlement with the IRS. The fund, set at $1.776 billion, a number chosen for its patriotic echo, was described as a mechanism to issue formal apologies and payments to individuals who claimed to have "suffered weaponization and lawfare" at the hands of the federal government.
The backlash was immediate and bipartisan. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns about who would benefit from the payouts. Critics questioned whether the money would flow primarily to the president's political allies. National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy called it "essentially a slush fund to reward Trump's allies," describing the $1.776 billion figure as "a gimmick to swaddle political payoffs in patriotic array."
The administration insisted there was no partisan requirement for filing claims. But the political damage was done. By early June, Blanche told House lawmakers the fund was "not moving forward, ever."
DOJ attorneys reinforced that position in two separate court filings, stating the fund had "not been set up" and that legal challenges were premature. Yet none of those statements carried the weight of sworn testimony, a distinction Judge Brinkema apparently found significant enough to demand more.
The clash fits a broader pattern of friction between the Trump administration and the federal bench. In recent months, the D.C. Circuit rebuked Judge Boasberg over a contempt probe tied to Trump deportation flights, and the administration has repeatedly pushed back against what it views as judicial overreach into executive authority.
There is a legitimate constitutional tension here. The separation of powers is not a talking point, it is a structural feature of the republic. Courts do not ordinarily compel Cabinet secretaries to testify under oath as a condition of dismissing a lawsuit the government says is moot. If the fund truly is dead, demanding sworn declarations from the Treasury Secretary and the Acting Attorney General starts to look less like judicial prudence and more like a judge who does not trust the executive branch and wants to put officials on a leash.
Democracy Forward, the progressive legal group representing the plaintiffs, sees it differently. Skye Perryman, the organization's president and CEO, seized on the DOJ's refusal.
"It is telling that even after the federal court gave them a week, the Acting Attorney General and other senior administration officials continue to refuse to say under oath that the Slush Fund is dead and won't operate in the future."
Perryman added that the officials had not "provided any information under oath about their compliance with the court's prior directives."
The DOJ's separation-of-powers argument is not frivolous. Federal courts should think twice before ordering senior executive officials to submit to compelled testimony in civil litigation, especially when the government's own filings already say the challenged program was never established. There is a reason the Constitution divides power among three branches, and courts that treat Cabinet members like hostile witnesses risk setting a precedent that future administrations, of either party, will regret.
But the DOJ also created this problem. The fund was announced with fanfare, drew bipartisan backlash and multiple lawsuits, and then quietly retreated without a clear, formal termination. Blanche's statement to House lawmakers, "not moving forward, ever", was definitive in tone but informal in form. When a federal judge asks you to put that on the record under oath and you refuse, you hand your opponents a talking point and invite the court to wonder what you are protecting.
The administration has prevailed before when activist judges overstepped, and it may well prevail here on the merits. The fund appears to be defunct. The legal challenge may indeed be moot. But mootness is easier to establish when the people who made the decision are willing to say so with their names on a sworn statement.
The Washington Examiner noted that the fund faced not only lawsuits but threats from blue states like California to impose a 100 percent tax on any payouts, a legally dubious stunt that Treasury Secretary Bessent dismissed by saying, "There is no cure for stupid." That kind of confidence plays well in a press conference. In a courtroom, judges tend to want paperwork.
With federal courts dark for the holiday, the next move belongs to Judge Brinkema. She could accept the DOJ's argument that prior statements suffice and move toward dismissing the case. She could also escalate, ordering compliance, holding the government in contempt, or setting a hearing to press the issue further.
The original temporary block on the fund came in response to a lawsuit arguing the program was unconstitutional and violated federal law. A former federal prosecutor and other plaintiffs brought the challenge, and a hearing had been set for June 12 to consider a longer or permanent pause.
Several open questions remain unanswered. What were the exact terms of the IRS-Trump family settlement that preceded the fund's creation? What criteria would have governed who qualified for payments? Has the administration produced any formal documentation, beyond courtroom assertions and congressional testimony, that the fund has been terminated? And if it has, why not say so under oath?
The broader debate over judicial overreach in Trump-era cases is real, and conservatives are right to push back when judges substitute their policy preferences for executive authority. A DOJ spokesperson captured that frustration in an earlier statement: "We will not allow the policy preferences of judges to interfere with our efforts to provide restitution to victims of lawfare."
Fair enough. But when the government announces a $1.776 billion fund, watches it collapse under political and legal pressure, tells everyone it is dead, and then refuses to formalize that decision in the one place where words carry legal consequences, the administration is not defending the separation of powers. It is defending ambiguity. And ambiguity, in government, is never an accident.
If the fund is dead, bury it on the record. Sworn declarations are not a constitutional crisis, they are how serious people close the book.
