CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins didn’t mince words on Monday night as she dismantled President Trump’s claim of ignorance about a newly minted $1.776 billion fund his Justice Department announced as part of a settlement to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
The so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” unveiled by the Trump Justice Department on Monday, May 18, 2026, is being widely characterized by ethics attorneys and legal analysts as an unaccountable slush fund — one that critics warn is designed to funnel taxpayer money directly to the president’s political allies, including January 6 defendants he has already pardoned.
Collins opened her show, “The Source,” with a biting video essay juxtaposing Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to lower gas prices with what she described as the actual delivery: a retribution fund for his supporters. The number itself — $1.776 billion — is intentional, an unmistakable nod to 1776.
Trump Pleads Ignorance on His Own Settlement
Asked about the fund earlier Monday, Trump distanced himself from the details, insisting he had little involvement. “Well, it’s been very well received, I have to tell you. I know very little about it. I wasn’t involved in — in the whole creation of it, and — and the negotiation,” the president said. “But this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated, horribly treated. It’s anti-weaponization.”
Collins wasn’t buying it. As she pointed out on air, the settlement is posted publicly online — and its terms hand the president sweeping control over who benefits. Under the agreement, Trump can fire anyone overseeing the fund. His acting attorney general, Todd Blanche — the president’s former personal attorney — will appoint the five-member board that distributes the nearly $1.8 billion. Only one board member will be selected in consultation with congressional leadership.
The Justice Department says the money will come from an account typically used to settle lawsuits. Notably, Trump declined to answer when asked whether funds would flow to people he has pardoned — a category that, after his January 2025 inauguration, includes nearly everyone convicted or charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including those who attacked police officers.
CNN Panel Stunned by the Scale
Earlier in the day, a separate CNN panel hosted by Dana Bash was visibly floored by the announcement. “Have we ever seen anything like this in the history of this country?” Bash asked chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid. Her one-word answer: “No.”
Reid noted that the president’s team has compared the fund to the Keepseagle Fund, established under the Obama administration. But that fund was just $760 million and was created to resolve claims of racial discrimination by the Department of Agriculture — a vastly different scope and purpose. “We’re talking about a much larger group of potential victims and a much smaller fund,” Reid said, adding that the negotiators at the table were exclusively Trump’s personal lawyers and attorneys from the White House, Justice Department, and IRS. “There was no outside voice.”
Reid predicted the fund will face heavy litigation and could reach the Supreme Court within the year. Special correspondent Jamie Gangel was even more direct, warning that “this money is to go to Trump allies” and that the five people Blanche selects will be “five people that Donald Trump approves of.”
The Lawsuit Behind the Fund
The settlement stems from Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns. A contractor at the IRS leaked his tax returns for 2016 and 2017 to news organizations in 2020. Reporting based on those documents revealed that the billionaire president paid just $750 in income tax in 2016 and again in 2017. The leaker, Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, pleaded guilty to unauthorized disclosures of tax returns and was sentenced in 2024 to the maximum five years in prison.
Trump, alongside his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — who run the Trump Organization — had sued the IRS for $10 billion. The settlement drops the suit in exchange for the creation of the fund.
Kinzinger: ‘The Dumbest Time in American History’
Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger blasted the arrangement when it was first reported on Friday, May 15. Appearing on “Laura Coates Live” on May 16, Kinzinger did the grim math on the figure circulating at that point — roughly $1.7 billion.
“$1.7 billion. That’s creepily about $1 million for each January 6th defendant if you actually do the math on that,” Kinzinger told Coates. He warned that the president picks the board, the board isn’t accountable to the public, and recipients won’t have to be disclosed. “This is clearly a taxpayer-funded slush fund for one reason: to pay off the people that did his bidding.”
Coates put it more bluntly: “So first, they were pardoned. Now we pay them?”
Nearly 100 House Democrats have already moved to block creation of the fund, and legal challenges are expected to mount in the coming weeks. Whether the fund survives the courts — or congressional scrutiny — may determine whether Trump’s promise of “retribution” becomes one of the most consequential, and contested, payouts in modern American political history.
