US President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, May 21, 2026.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Friday defended the controversial new Department of Justice “Anti-Weaponization Fund” after strong pushback to it from Senate Republicans.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, said early this week that he was creating the $1.8 billion fund as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump got no money in that settlement, but the fund is aimed at compensating many of his supporters who allege they were victims of prosecutorial overreach by the DOJ under the Biden administration.
“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” Trump said. ” Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”
Earlier Friday, several House Republican lawmakers defended the fund in interviews with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, when asked about the fund, said Trump has “been one of the biggest victims of weaponization,” and that he considers it “an appropriate approach and use of tax dollars, as long as the guardrails exist.”
But Arrington also said, “We have to have the accountability measures and the safeguards, so that it is not a quote, slush fund, where you’re doling out monies to political allies that don’t have legitimate claims.”
“It needs to be fair and objective … that’s why I think that the Senate’s going to find a path forward,” he said.
Those guardrails could come as part of the next congressional reconciliation package, “or they could just have an agreement,” Arrington suggested.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said of the fund, “I think that there is a need for it.”
Comer claimed Trump had been the victim of “lawfare.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., when asked about the case settlement that led to the creation of the fund, said, “I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t know what the details are.”
“No one [knows] weaponization of government against him and his family better than Donald Trump,” Emmer said. “I suspect that whatever agreement was made, it’s fair on both sides.”
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