A legal and political firestorm is growing over the $1.776bn “anti-weaponization” fund Donald Trump’s justice department has launched to pay alleged victims of “lawfare”, but that ex-DoJ officials and legal experts call “corrupt” and a “slush fund” for Maga allies that benefits the president.

Congressional critics from both parties and legal scholars have attacked the fund as an opaque scheme that will improperly help January 6 insurrectionists, some of whom said they intend to apply for grants, while echoing Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden’s administration was “weaponized” against them.

Moreover, since the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, unveiled the fund on 18 May to settle a $10bn lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS over a leak of his tax returns in 2019, critics have blasted a fund “addendum” that blocks IRS action on any pending tax probes of Trump, his sons and their businesses.

Legal challenges to the fund and its addendum have been growing. A bipartisan group of 35 ex-federal judges on 27 May filed a motion appealing to a federal judge in Miami who oversaw Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to reopen the case, and launch an inquiry to determine if Trump and DoJ’s unorthodox deal to settle the lawsuit involved fraud. The jurists’ charge that the settlement fund’s creation was a “fraud on the court”.

In an extraordinary turnaround on 29 May, the Miami judge reopened Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS to explore whether the court had been deceived by the parties involved including DoJ, and the deal was “premised on deception”.

Separately, responding to a lawsuit filed by a former January 6 prosecutor who DoJ fired, plus other individuals and entities who say they have faced Trump administration attacks, a Virginia federal judge ruled on 29 May temporarily blocking further moves to set up the fund and fund dispersals until at least a hearing on 12 June.

No fund payments have been made yet since it’s still being organized.

The slush fund’s organization also faces fire from critics worried about its lack of transparency and the ultimate authority it gives Trump to fire “without cause” any of its five-member board who will decide about payments. Blanche is slated to appoint the board members, one of whom will be named in consultation with Congress.

The DoJ announced on Monday that it would “abide by” the Friday court ruling that temporarily blocked the fund from moving forward.

Also on Monday, as the fund faced mounting criticism and pressures from the courts and political leaders in both parties, including Senate majority leader John Thune, Axios reported that the fund “for now” was dead, citing two unnamed sources.

Trump told ABC news: “We are subject to the courts.” He added: “At this moment, that’s what it is… If a court doesn’t allow it, and right now a court has it held up, what can you do?”

Ex-DoJ officials are sharply critical of the fund’s legality and opaqueness.

“Everything about the $1.776bn fund is crazy and corrupt,” ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich said, citing “the amount of money involved; the attempt to define the universe of eligible claimants; and the utter lack of transparency in how the money will be distributed”.

Bromwich called the anti weaponization fund, which was created by Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, “an attempted political payoff to criminals … and wide open to people who committed crimes of violence on Trump’s behalf.”

He added: “People who attacked and injured law enforcement personnel become heroes and victims; the law enforcement personnel and prosecutors who made righteous cases against lawbreakers become villains, and are targeted for firing and investigation.”

Former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer, who served during the George HW Bush administration, said the slush fund is “outright theft. Trump and his DoJ have decided that they’re going to give money away to his supporters who will claim some sort of personal abuse when they, in fact, have been the abusers.”

Regarding the IRS addendum to the slush fund, Ayer added: “This blank check immunity from IRS inquiries of Trump, his family and affiliates can only happen when due process and the rule of law have failed.”

Trump has loudly defended the fund, asserting without evidence that he is “helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden administration”.

According to the DoJ, the fund will “have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief to those who successfully argue that the federal government wronged them,” and indicated anyone can submit a claim and there are “no partisan requirements.”

When the fund was announced, Blanche said: “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

Blanche, who reportedly came under fire at a closed door Senate hearing soon after the fund was announced, has tried to tamp down criticism with vague promises of public disclosures, say critics.

Several far right allies of Trump – including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio – who were part of the Capitol assault on Jan. 6 and other Trump supporters have publicly praised the slush fund and indicated they plan to seek payments from the giant fund.

Many Democrats in Congress have sharply criticized the slush fund and some Republicans too have also voiced outrage over the fund’s creation and purpose. North Carolina’s Republican senator Thom Tillis, told CNN’s “State of the Union,” on May 24 that the fund’s raison d’etre of providing money for “anti-weaponization” efforts, is “stupid on stilts.”

“I call it a payout pot for punks,” Tillis said, adding that the fund is “ politically tone deaf. Whoever did it should be fired.” Tillis stressed that the fund should not benefit “ people who are convicted by a jury of their peers or pled guilty to assaulting a police officer”

Likewise, Mike Pence in interviews on CBS and NBC shows on 31 May called the fund “deeply offensive” given that it could make payments to January 6 rioters, and urged the Trump administration to “drop the idea entirely”.

Further, Democratic senator and minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York has written to colleagues: “Trump’s nearly $2 billion MAGA slush fund is his most brazen act of self-dealing yet and one of the most corrupt schemes ever launched by a president … Senate Democrats will not let it stand.”

In the House, too, Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Democratic congressman Tom Suozzi of New York are drafting legislation to block the fund entirely. Two police officers who were attacked by rioters on January 6 as they sought illegally to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election have also filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the fund.

In a twist, CNN reported on 26 May that a number of Trump foes he’s targeted for revenge, including fired ex-Capitol riot prosecutors and fired federal officials, are weighing seeking compensation from the slush fund. Bromwich told CNN that his client ex-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who Trump vilified for his role in the Russia investigations during his first term, is “strongly considering” filing a claim.

Several ex-prosecutors say the fund as a danger to democracy and rule of law

“This all stands the rule of law and democracy on its head. The administration has subverted the democratic process in 2026 in order to reward people who tried to subvert the democratic process in 2021,” said ex-federal prosecutor Bruce Green, who now teaches at Fordham.

“Ordinarily, before the government distributes taxpayer money, there is a democratic process. Congress establishes the program after an opportunity for public discussion … In this case, in contrast, the executive branch unilaterally intends to draw close to $2bn out of the treasury without a congressional appropriation, as part of the ostensible settlement of a collusive lawsuit that the government never answered but certainly could have defended.”

Former US attorney for eastern Michigan Barbara McQuade, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, said the fund’s creation “is a blatant example of self-dealing corruption that not only enriches Trump‘s political allies, but also advances the false political narrative that the Biden administration engaged in lawfare. If this fund is used to reward people who assaulted Capitol police officers or committed other violent crimes for which they were convicted in court, it will send a message that vigilante violence is welcome as long as it aids the party in power. This is antithetical to the rule of law.

“There’s just no basis for the addendum to this agreement to forbid the IRS from ever auditing or bringing tax claims against Trump,” McQuade said. “That remedy is entirely unrelated to his claim regarding the leak of his tax returns. Settlements must resolve the claim alleged. This is just a gift, pure and simple.”

Ex-federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, who now teaches law at Fordham and is the author of a forthcoming book on Trump’s DoJ, said the fund was “based on a myth that people seem too willing to accept: that the Biden DoJ was improperly bringing cases against all sorts of people it shouldn’t have. That didn’t happen. That is a Trump political talking point that is now embedded in DoJ. Blanche is willing to claim that this will be open to everyone and not a biased fund, but no one believes that.”

Looking ahead, Bromwich said: “There is apparently nothing this justice department won’t do to please the president – the weaponization fund is only the latest and most corrupt episode.”