WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of President Donald Trump’s critics, including a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest, sued Friday to block payouts from a new $1.776 billion settlement fund for Trump allies claiming to be victims of a weaponized government.The lawsuit adds fuel to a mounting backlash against the Trump administration’s creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to resolve the Republican president’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.Plaintiffs’ attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward are seeking a court order halting the fund’s implementation and preventing the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts from it. The federal suit, filed in Alexandria, Virginia, claims there is no legal basis or accountability behind the fund.
“The unlawfulness that has imbued the Anti-Weaponization Fund from its inception requires that it be wholly dismantled,” the suit says.Another advocacy group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, separately filed its own lawsuit on Friday in Washington, D.C., to challenge the “slush fund” created by Trump’s “sham settlement.” CREW’s suit refers to the fund as “a jaw-dropping act of presidential corruption.”
