A stunning twist may be threatening one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial political projects — and the person who may have accidentally doomed it is his own attorney general, Pam Bondi.

According to a bombshell report from The New York Times, Bondi quietly created legal guardrails last year that could now block Trump’s explosive $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” from ever functioning the way the administration intended.

And critics say the irony is almost unbelievable.

The massive compensation fund has become one of the most politically explosive initiatives of Trump’s second presidency. Officially, the program was designed to compensate individuals and groups claiming they were unfairly targeted by the Department of Justice during the Biden administration.

Supporters call it justice.

Critics call it a taxpayer-funded slush fund for MAGA loyalists, January 6 defendants, and Trump allies.

Now legal experts say the plan may violate Bondi’s own DOJ ethics restrictions.

According to the report, Bondi signed a directive immediately after taking office in February 2025 titled “Reinstating the Prohibitions on Improper Third Party Settlements.”

The policy revived Obama-era and Trump-era restrictions preventing the Justice Department from funneling settlement money toward outside organizations or entities not directly tied to the underlying lawsuits themselves.

In simple terms:

DOJ settlements generally cannot be used as giant pools of money handed to unrelated third parties.

But critics argue that’s exactly what Trump’s new fund appears designed to do.

The problem is potentially enormous.

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” reportedly allows payments not only to individuals but also to broad “entities” connected to claims of political targeting — even when many of those recipients never filed lawsuits in the first place.

That detail immediately alarmed former Justice Department officials.

“I have never heard of the department ever being willing to grant blanket immunity,” former DOJ civil division branch director Jennifer Ricketts told the Times.

“That seems blatantly corrupt. It’s a shocking gift to the president.”

Ricketts also questioned how the administration even arrived at the staggering $1.776 billion figure attached to the fund.

Normally, DOJ settlements are calculated using actual lawsuits, legal damages, litigation exposure, and risk assessments prepared by government attorneys.

But according to the report, it remains unclear what legal calculations — if any — produced the massive billion-dollar number behind Trump’s compensation plan.

That uncertainty is now fueling growing accusations that the fund was politically engineered rather than legally justified.

The controversy deepened further because Bondi’s directive was specifically designed to stop the exact type of settlement arrangements conservatives long criticized during the Obama administration.

Republicans for years attacked DOJ agreements that directed settlement money toward nonprofit groups, advocacy organizations, or outside entities unrelated to specific legal claims.

Now Trump’s own administration appears accused of constructing a dramatically larger version of the same practice.

And Bondi’s own memo may become the legal weapon used against it.

According to the Times, the DOJ policy explicitly prohibited settlement agreements requiring payments to nongovernmental third-party organizations “that were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits.”

Critics argue Trump’s compensation structure fits precisely within the behavior Bondi’s directive was meant to stop.

That contradiction is now creating serious legal vulnerability.

Meanwhile, opposition to the fund continues spreading politically as well.

Democrats have already denounced the program as a corrupt payoff operation benefiting extremists and Trump loyalists.

Even some Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from the plan, especially after revelations that portions of the agreement may also shield Trump, his businesses, and affiliated individuals from future IRS scrutiny.

The escalating backlash reveals how politically radioactive the issue has become.

To Trump supporters, the fund represents overdue justice against what they believe was a politicized Justice Department that unfairly targeted conservatives.

To critics, however, the plan increasingly resembles something far more dangerous:

A government-run compensation system potentially rewarding political allies while protecting powerful insiders from accountability.

And now the most damaging obstacle to Trump’s plan may not come from Democrats, judges, or prosecutors.

It may come from rules quietly signed by his own attorney general before the controversy even began.