Hobbes would likely also take a dim view of a major development announced by the Trump administration on May 20, 2026.
The fund, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, offers “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
Some of them are straightforward; others are less so.
An obvious question is: Should taxpayer funds be given to Trump allies, in a settlement reached by the Trump-controlled DOJ as compensation for a Trump family lawsuit?
From that concern emerged what was then, and remains, an uncontroversial, bedrock moral principle.
Commentators reacting to the Justice Department’s decision to establish an Anti-Weaponization Fund to settle the president’s claims against the IRS have drawn on these longstanding principles to criticize it, including how the DOJ, which is part of the executive branch controlled by Trump, negotiated with him to reach this settlement.
Williams, the judge, wrote that “it is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.” That requirement means that a court can only rule when there is a real dispute before it.
While the new fund may not make direct payments to Trump, he may benefit from payments to family members, business associates and others who will claim to have been victimized by the Biden administration, including people prosecuted and convicted of crimes committed on Jan. 6.
It seems clear that courts will soon be asked to decide whether Raskin and other legal critics are right in their assertions of a host of legal problems with the Anti-Weaponization Fund. How they will do so remains to be seen.
But, in a democracy, deciding whether the creation of the fund violates the moral maxim that no one can be a judge in his or her own cause ultimately will be up to the people.
