Last Friday afternoon, the Justice Department submitted a much-anticipated filing in an ongoing case over President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. The judge gave the administration a choice: If the fund is dead, as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an appearance before a congressional subcommittee, the DOJ could file sworn declarations from officials to that effect. 

But if those officials — Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who signed the settlement agreement creating the fund — declined to swear the fund would never exist, Judge Leonie Brinkema vowed to issue a scheduling order, as federal judges do to advance any ongoing case.

In other words, Brinkema wanted officials to swear the fund was dead and never coming back — or the case would continue.

Friday’s filing made clear there would be no declarations. Instead, the DOJ insisted any sworn statements from Blanche and team were unnecessary because, before Congress, in court filings and in open court, the Trump administration has repeatedly said it would not move forward with the fund. 

The DOJ also made another, more provocative argument: By requesting declarations from two Cabinet members and a presidential appointee, Brinkema overstepped her authority. In keeping with separation of powers principles, it argued, neither she nor any other district judge can compel testimony from executive branch officials.

What’s curious about that argument is that it belies the DOJ’s own conduct in recent cases. 

Specifically, since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, district court judges have directed high-ranking officials to submit sworn declarations — and gotten them.

Notably, in late 2025, the administration submitted sworn declarations in the battle over Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport more than 100 alleged members of Tren de Aragua and place them in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

In that case, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered that a plane full of alleged Tren de Aragua members could not take off, but that flight nonetheless left for El Salvador.

Months later, as Boasberg explored whether to hold any lawyers or administration officials in contempt, he directed the Trump administration to submit declarations from all officials involved in the decision to transfer detainees to El Salvador on March 15 and 16, 2025.

In response, Boasberg received declarations not only from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who acknowledged the decision was hers, but also from Joseph Mazzara, a senior Homeland Security lawyer, and then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, which revealed they provided her with unspecified legal advice in connection with her decision.

When the DOJ filed those declarations in court, it argued that Boasberg had no legal basis to require Noem, Mazzara or Blanche “to provide live testimony” because “[c]ompelling senior Executive Branch officials to testify in court encroaches on the separation of powers.” 

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But the DOJ did not object to providing sworn, written declarations itself, as it has now.  

Blanche is also not the only DOJ official who was ordered to provide a declaration and complied. Jay Clayton, the current acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was directed last year by Judge Paul Engelmayer to submit a sworn declaration about efforts to ensure that victim-identifying information was redacted from documents reviewed by his office and released by the DOJ in connection with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Again, without complaint, on Jan. 30, 2026, Clayton did just that.

And more recently, in connection with his order that the Kennedy Center remove Trump’s name from any physical signage and its website, Judge Christopher Cooper also directed Trump and other defendants to file “a sworn declaration from a responsible official of the Kennedy Center certifying [their] compliance.” The CEO and executive director of the Kennedy Center, Charles Matthew Floca, then declared, under penalty of perjury, that the Kennedy Center fully complied with the order on June 13, just days before Blanche, Bessent and Woodward refused to provide any sworn declarations of their own.

That begs the question: Is “separation of powers” the DOJ’s real objection to providing the declarations Brinkema requested in order to satisfy herself that the “anti-weaponization” fund is officially over?  

Or is that argument concealing the administration’s hope — or even intent — to keep the door open on the fund?

In addition to requesting declarations from Blanche, Bessent and Woodward as a condition of dismissing the lawsuit, Brinkema also mandated that the DOJ file a status report “confirm[ing] that no payments have been made from the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and that no funding has been transferred to an account for the Anti-Weaponization Fund, or if it has, that that transfer has been reversed.”

Late Monday night, the DOJ filed that report. Signed by Andrew Block, a senior counsel to Woodward, the report states that “[f]or the avoidance of doubt,” the defendants in the litigation — the DOJ; the Treasury Department; the “anti weaponization” fund; and Blanche, Bessent, and Woodward – “reconfirm that they are complying with this Court’s orders” and that no money has come into or out of the “anti-weaponization” fund.

But Block’s saying, in a court filing, that no money has yet changed hands only underscores what Blanche, Bessent and Woodward will not: that the fund has no future.

Lisa Rubin

Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.