00:00Last week, the Justice Department announced they'd be creating something called the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
00:05Chris, where does the money for this fund come from?
00:09It's U.S. taxpayer money.
00:11The fund is taxpayer dollars that is set aside to make payments to people for compensation.
00:19The way that they've set this up is they're holding the money in the Treasury Department.
00:22There's a section within Treasury that's called the Judgment Fund.
00:27And it's essentially what's known as a permanent appropriations, which means that it always has money.
00:33And it has historically been used to make payments to individuals and organizations who get judgments against the government.
00:44In most cases, people go through a court process.
00:48And at the end of the court process, whether it's a jury decision or whether it's a judge ruling, they
00:55get money directly from this fund.
00:57And how have past presidents used the Judgment Fund?
01:02Right. Well, that's that's one of the differences that you just said, how to past presidents use it, because past
01:07presidents don't use it.
01:09The past administrations have used it and especially the Justice Department have used it.
01:13So the difference with Trump is that he's trying to use this fund as a specific way to pay his
01:24allies money if they can come forward and make a claim that they were victimized by government weaponization.
01:33And so previously, money was taken out of this fund after people and organizations went through years of litigation or
01:43years of negotiations with the government.
01:45And there was some kind of a independent or outside person or judge or or jury that made a decision.
01:55And Trump has done away with that in this iteration of what he's trying to do.
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