{"id":32081,"date":"2026-05-23T04:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T04:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/32081\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T04:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T04:56:12","slug":"lawsuit-argues-trumps-1-8-billion-fund-excludes-those-he-targeted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/32081\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit Argues Trump\u2019s $1.8 Billion Fund Excludes Those He Targeted"},"content":{"rendered":"

A coalition of individuals and groups says it was targeted by an overzealous Justice Department under President Trump in a lawsuit filed on Friday, challenging the $1.8 billion fund the president said would be created for victims of a \u201cweaponized\u201d federal government.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit<\/a> presented a novel approach to challenging the fund, which legal experts have warned<\/a> could be hard to fight in court because of the difficulty of pointing to an individual or group directly harmed by the fund. It followed an earlier lawsuit<\/a> brought this week by two law enforcement officers who were present during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and said they faced violence, only to see rioters now floated as possible settlement recipients.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has left little doubt that the fund is designed to steer money toward many of Mr. Trump\u2019s supporters, including those convicted of breaking the law on the president\u2019s behalf. The lawsuit filed Friday claims that explicit partisan favoritism, alone, could make the fund illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy its own terms, the anti-weaponization fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by \u2018Democrat\u2019 administrations, even though the current administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it,\u201d the lawsuit said<\/a>. \u201cNeither the First Amendment nor the equal protection guarantee of our Constitution countenance such blatant partiality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs joining together in the case include a diverse mix of people and groups who the lawsuit said were targeted by the Trump administration or would be negatively affected by the fund.<\/p>\n

They included Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who has said he was fired for his work on the Jan. 6 investigation, as well as Jonathan Caravello, a professor in California who was arrested while protesting an immigration raid, charged with felony assault of a federal officer and later acquitted by a jury.<\/p>\n

The City of New Haven joined the case based on the Trump administration\u2019s reaction to its \u201csanctuary city\u201d policies, which the lawsuit said caused the government to pull federal funding from the city last year. The lawsuit also said that the creation of the fund could invite individuals previously prosecuted for attacking abortion clinics to apply, threatening the work of the National Abortion Federation, which is also a plaintiff.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit argues that while most of the plaintiffs had faced targeted attacks after being deemed \u201cideological or political opponents\u201d under the Trump administration, none would be able to apply for compensation because the fund is aimed at helping those who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats. The suit asked a federal judge in Virginia to order the fund to be stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unlawfulness that has imbued the anti-weaponization fund from its inception requires that it be wholly dismantled,\u201d the complaint said.<\/p>\n

The case relies on a different legal argument than the one brought by the law enforcement officers earlier this week. Yet both include claims that the fund, if used to pay out people convicted of violent crimes, would encourage future political violence.<\/p>\n

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks government spending, also joined the lawsuit, raising concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the fund. The legal group Democracy Forward is representing all involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coalition of individuals and groups says it was targeted by an overzealous Justice Department under President Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[17929,19264,15526,6238,8,1505,9,17928,12857,7,1071],"class_list":["post-32081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-17929","tag-anti-weaponization-fund-trump-v-irs","tag-common-cause-us","tag-donald-j","tag-headlines","tag-justice-department","tag-news","tag-storming-of-the-us-capitol-jan","tag-suits-and-litigation-civil","tag-top-stories","tag-trump"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116622117071991588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}