ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge slapped a preliminary injunction on President Donald Trump’s so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for Jan. 6 rioters on Friday.

“The bottom line is I don’t have the type of uncontestable evidence to show that [attempting to create the fund] would not be repeated,” Judge Leonie Brinkema said. “And there is clear evidence, in terms of statements by the acting attorney general and multiple statements by the president who has talked about how important it is that this fund should go forward.”

Justice Department attorney Andrew Block was unable to explain why the government simply could not put in writing that there were no plans to accept claims or conduct payouts.

“I don’t know, your honor. I have not had the ability to speak to the attorney general and ask that question,” Block said.

Brinkema gave the government one week to provide a declaration, signed under penalty of perjury by both acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, stating there would be no fund going forward.

Andrew Floyd, a former Justice Department prosecutor who also served as deputy chief for the Capitol Siege division investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, filed the lawsuit in May. (Floyd was fired by former Attorney General Pam Bondi amid a rash of other Jan. 6 prosecutor firings last year.) Shortly thereafter, Brinkema ordered the government to temporarily stop plans to create or operate the fund born from Trump’s self-serving settlement with the IRS.

In the wake of that ruling, both Blanche and other lawyers for the Justice Department have represented that the fund was “not going forward,” but ahead of the hearing on Friday, Floyd’s lawyer, Joel McElvain, said there’s no consistency between what is said publicly and what is said in court.

“Defendants have failed to substantiate that position with any competent evidence, despite repeated requests from plaintiffs, much less evidence of a written modification of the Trump v. IRS Agreement that created the Fund or a rescission of the Acting Attorney General’s order funding it,” McElvain wrote.

The Justice Department is reportedly quietly looking for ways to keep the gravy train flowing to people who feel they have been victimized by Democrats or the Biden administration. And even without a designated “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” legal experts told HuffPost, there are easy ways payouts could be accomplished anyway.

Trump hasn’t been coy about wanting to fork over stacks of taxpayer cash to his allies, either.

When NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump this week whether the fund was still alive despite Blanche’s claims to Congress that it was not, Trump started by heaping sympathy on Jan. 6 rioters.

“People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe,” Trump said. “They’re vicious. They’re violent, what they did to people. And of course they went after me more than anybody else… But people have been badly hurt. They’ve committed suicide. They’ve lost their jobs. They’ve lost their families. They’ve lost their wives. They’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization government… Well, look, if it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.”

The president would not commit to limits on who could receive the funds, like rioters convicted of assaulting police, for example. Instead, he told Welker he would “have to see it” and referred to police who defended the Capitol as “dirty cops.” (He made similar remarks on “Pod Force One” with Miranda Divine and continued to espouse debunked conspiracy theories about the FBI instigating the insurrection.)

The public watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saw its request for a temporary restraining order on the fund denied this week. In that case, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., was unable to get a straight answer as to why the government would not simply rescind any order it had to create the fund.

When Leon pressed Block on this point, he replied: “All I know is that the acting attorney general has said the fund is not moving forward.” (Blanche made the remark to Congress last week.)

During the motion hearing Friday, Brinkema noted a disparity in what the public seems to understand about the status of the fund and what the Trump administration has said. At the federal courthouse in Alexandria where she presides, for example, Brinkema said one request for compensation to the slush fund had already been received.

“We can’t control what everyone who thinks there is a fund thinks,” Block said. “People may be lining up for lawyers... [but] none of those applications are being considered.”

After a declaration is signed by Blanche and Bessent, the judge said she would assess whether the entire case could be dismissed as moot.

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