US District Judge Leonie Brinkema barred the administration from taking any further action to create or operate the fund while she considers whether to impose a longer-lasting pause.
Her order blocks the transfer of money into the fund, the consideration of claims and the disbursement of any payments, saying the freeze was needed to ensure that no money was “irreversibly disbursed” before the legal challenge is heard.
The decision is another setback for one of Trump’s most politically explosive second-term initiatives, which has already alarmed Democrats, legal experts and some Republicans in Congress.
The fund was created by the Justice Department as part of an extraordinary settlement of Trump’s civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns by a former government contractor.
The administration says the programme is intended to compensate people who suffered from government “weaponisation” and “lawfare” –Trump’s terms for what he says was the politically motivated targeting of conservatives and his supporters.
But opponents say the fund has no clear legal basis, little public oversight and could be used to reward loyalists, including defendants convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
Brinkema’s brief order came after a lawsuit by a group of plaintiffs including Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who investigated and prosecuted the January 6 defendants, and Jonathan Caravello, a California professor arrested while protesting an immigration raid.
They argued that the fund amounted to a “collusive agreement” between Trump and his administration, with “no congressional authorisation, no basis in law, and no accountability.”
The judge set a June 12 hearing to consider whether the government’s work on the fund should remain frozen for longer.
There was no immediate response to the ruling from Trump or the Justice Department.
Trump, on his first day back in office last year, granted clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted over the Capitol assault, when his supporters attacked Congress in an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
