The former judge who helped block Trump's allies fund

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

**Nancy Gertner** (0:21)
They're not doing this fund. Who knows what else they would do?
At this point, they seem to have paused it. They have not walked away from it. Who knows what else they would do?

**Chris Bentley** (0:32)
The Justice Department says it will abide by a federal judge's ruling against the pot of money many in Congress called Trump's slush fund. It's Tuesday, June 2nd, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Chris Bentley.
A little later on the show, we'll hear about a man in immigration detention who has joined a hunger strike over what he says are deplorable conditions.

**Alexandra Goncalves-Peña** (1:05)
I believe that he had been not eating for approximately a week and a half, like so many others that are currently there.

**Chris Bentley** (1:13)
That story coming up in about five minutes. But first, the Trump administration is backing off a bit on its plan to give nearly $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to people it says were victims of political prosecution by the Biden and Obama administrations.
That is after a federal judge put a hold on the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund on Friday. A group of 35 former judges is going even further, seeking to reopen the case that led to the settlement creating this fund. That was a settlement between President Trump and his own government over the release of his tax returns. We spoke with one of the judges calling that deal a, quote, fraud on the court.
Nancy Gertner is a retired federal judge who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. She's now at Harvard, and she told Scott Tong, the fund was illegal from the start.

**Nancy Gertner** (2:07)
There's a statute that says that you can call on the Treasury for a settlement so that every time you settle a claim against the government, you don't have to rush to Congress.
That's what they were trying to get the money under. They felt that they needed to go into court, to put it sort of imprimatur, that this was a legitimate claim. Trump's and Trump's family were making a legitimate claim on the Treasury, and they wanted to go to court for that. The court essentially going through the court to bless it as a legitimate claim on this fund. The problem was, as we said, it may well not have been a legitimate claim. It is Trump ostensibly suing himself, the kinds of defenses that the IRS would raise with respect to claims like this, that it was filed too late, that the damages didn't match, where they were claiming all those kinds of defenses, the IRS didn't raise. All that happened here was once it was clear that the judge candidly smelled a rat, had thought that this was collusive, they just moved to dismiss the case, hoping there would be no judicial inquiry, and there will be.

**Scott Tong** (3:16)
Now, the fund is under legal scrutiny, as you're describing, it's under political scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Last Friday, a federal judge temporarily halted its creation. Can you explain for the rest of us the judge's reasoning?

**Nancy Gertner** (3:30)
Well, there is a rule that allows you to go to reopen a settlement.
If the court was the victim of a fraud, if the settlement was the product of collusion. So you can reopen the settlement. And we were claiming as federal judges, former federal judges, retired judges, that we had an interest in the Fair Administration of Justice, and that these were the kinds of certain and we were concerned about a fraud on the court.
And so we were in a position to raise these kinds of claims. We also said that the judge could raise it on her own, be concerned when a settlement was the product of fraud. She, by the way, did something in addition, which we had not even raised. There is a rule that says that you can sanction attorneys when they are filing baseless pleadings, baseless claims, it's called Rule 11 And she said she's going to consider reopening the case, to consider whether or not the entire thing was the product of fraud, and also whether the lawyers were subject to sanction under Rule 11, which is really quite extraordinary. We had not raised that. She began to understand that, something was rotten in the state of Denmark here, and can't do it.

**Scott Tong** (4:52)
Now the quote settlement that created this fund also gives immunity to the president, his family, and businesses from investigations and audits by the government. What happens to that piece of the settlement?