Top Doj Official Planned To Make A Claim With Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization Fund’

A top Justice Department staffer responsible for liaising with Congress planned to make a claim with President Donald Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and asked to recuse himself from any work related to it — a move that alarmed colleagues at the DOJ, two administration officials familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

The official, Patrick Davis, raised his plan to seek the compensation with others at the DOJ in May because he viewed it as a conflict. DOJ officials were concerned by Davis’ recusal request in part because he was responsible for communicating the department’s reasons for setting up the fund to lawmakers.

Davis works as the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, a Senate-confirmed position, and previously served as a top aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

His plan to make a claim from the fund stems from his time as a congressional staffer. He had his phone and email records subpoenaed when he was investigating “Russiagate,” the yearslong probe into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow. It’s unclear how much money Davis would have sought from the halted fund, if any, but the proposed fund would have also offered formal apologies.

“[Davis] has relationships with the senators, and it was a very tough time for him to back out,” said one of the officials, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. “In a very fraught moment, with legislative affairs and stuff with the Hill, DOJ needed to have the head of leg affairs involved.”

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” faced massive congressional backlash from Republicans and Democrats, with critics alleging it would simply be a slush fund for Trump’s allies. The fund, which the DOJ set up to pay claims to people who alleged they were victims of a politicized justice system, proved to be so toxic that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers during a hearing last week that the Justice Department would no longer pursue it.

Davis declined to comment. But a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement that “out of an abundance of caution, Davis temporarily recused himself on a precautionary basis and after internal consultation, it was decided that recusal was not necessary for a number of reasons.”

“As reported years ago, AAG Davis’s personal phone and email records were targeted while he was a congressional attorney investigating the Russiagate hoax,” the spokesperson said.

The two officials said that it would have been helpful for Davis to advise Blanche the day before the acting attorney general went to the Hill to address the uproar, and that there wasn’t a valid reason for a recusal since the fund hadn’t been formally set up.

“It was a hard issue and he just didn’t want to deal with it and didn’t want to be there to address the difficult conversations,” said the official. “The thing was a cop-out.”

There was nothing in the DOJ’s announcement of the fund that would have barred administration officials from pursuing a claim.

Davis was a senior aide to Grassley during some of the most sensitive moments of the senator’s investigation into the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Trump’s contacts with Russia.

Davis was listed as Grassley’s go-to on a slew of correspondence between the senator and DOJ seeking answers to questions about the FBI’s use of surveillance authority against a Trump campaign adviser, its reliance on a former British intelligence officer’s uncorroborated and salacious memos and allegations of bias against FBI officials who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Russia episode.

An inspector general report released in 2024 found that the Justice Department obtained “non-content communication records” of 43 congressional staffers linked to those investigations, including 21 who worked for Democratic staff, 20 who worked for Republican staff and two who worked in nonpartisan roles.

The records were obtained in an effort by the Justice Department in the first Trump administration to find leakers for stories about connections between associates of Trump and Russia. Republicans and Democrats pushed back against the probe in part because congressional committees were communicating with DOJ whistleblowers.

Davis in 2024 told The New York Times that the fact that his records were obtained by the government “felt like a violation, not simply on a personal level, but more importantly of the separation of powers given the nature of our oversight work.”

In 2023, Kash Patel, before he was FBI director, sued top Justice Department officials and the then-head of the FBI after they targeted his personal email while he was a staffer at the House Intelligence Committee probing the Russia investigation, but the suit was later dismissed.

Davis started as head of legislative affairs for the Justice Department in October and oversees an office with at least a dozen employees, but has reportedly seen a number of staffers depart in the last year. He and his DOJ office are poised to play key roles in the effort to get Blanche confirmed as attorney general.

Blanche has since said the fund was dead but Trump continues to talk it up, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend, “I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do many other Republicans.”

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.