The US justice department has announced a $1.7bn (£1.3bn) fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump who allege they were unfairly investigated by the Biden administration.
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was unveiled “in exchange” for the president dropping his $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns, said the justice department.
Democrats criticised the settlement as a “slush fund” paid out of taxpayer money for Trump and his cronies from a federal agency overseen by him.
The lawsuit’s plaintiffs, which include Trump’s elder sons and the Trump Organization, will receive an apology, but no monetary compensation, the department said.
Monday’s settlement came two days before a 20 May deadline for both sides to address whether a legitimate legal dispute existed – given that Trump now oversees the IRS through his administration.
On Monday, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said the president was “entering into this settlement squarely for the benefit of the American people”.
“He will continue his fight to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable,” the spokesperson added.
When the judge asked a group of legal experts to submit an analysis last week, they called Trump’s lawsuit “unprecedented”.
“A sitting president seeks monetary damages for alleged harm to his personal interests from an executive agency that he controls,” the experts wrote in what is known as an “amicus brief”.
The experts cited Trump’s own statements that he controls both the IRS and the jutsice department lawyers handling the case.
Shortly after the dismissal was filed by Trump’s legal team, the justice department announced an agreement to establish the so-called Anti-Weaponisation Fund that would provide a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of those who suffered under weaponisation and lawfare”.
The fund will consist of a five-member commission, four of those appointed by the Attorney General, and will receive $1.776 billion to allow the justice department to settle and pay cases.
A report on who receives payments will be sent to the attorney general.
“The machinery of government should never be weaponised 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,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The settlement agreement constituted a “breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system,” Brandon DeBot, policy director for the Tax Law Center at New York University, said in a statement.
More than 90 Democrats in the House of Representatives said they had filed a motion to block the settlement.
Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin said it was a slush fund for Trump’s “private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists. . . and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes”.
In the lawsuit, Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization had claimed that nothing had been done to prevent the leak of information by a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn.
In September 2020 – just ahead of the November presidential election – that information formed the basis of an extensive New York Times investigation into Trump’s tax returns.
It revealed that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency in 2016, and no taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.
Trump released the documents himself two years later, in 2022.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing tax data from Trump and thousands of wealthy Americans while working as a contractor for the IRS.
The following year, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
