Jim Acosta on DOJ anti-weaponization fund: 'Shouldn't I be compensated?'

Source: The Hill

05/21/26 10:27 PM ET


Former CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta on Thursday questioned whether he should receive compensation from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “anti-weaponization” fund. “[President] Trump seized my White House press pass back in 2018, violating my First and Fifth Amendment rights, all part of a sustained government effort to destroy my career,” Acosta wrote on his Substack. “Shouldn’t I be compensated?”

Acosta’s entry on Substack is written to address Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and submit his claim for the fund. “Having been on the receiving end of some first-term Trump government weaponization, I think I have a pretty good case for some cold, hard ‘slush fund‘ cash,” Acosta wrote. “Preferably in $100’s. From the sound of it, just about anybody can apply. So here it goes.”

Acosta recounts having his White House press pass taken after a press conference in November 2018. He tells Blanche that he challenged Trump about his claims of a migrant “caravan” heading to the southern U.S. border that “amounted to an ‘invasion.'” Trump called him “the enemy of the people” and “a rude, terrible person.”

“Perhaps you saw it on TV,” he continues. “As I attempted to ask a question of the president, who was blowing his top, a White House intern tried to grab the microphone out of my hand. It was, in a word, intense.”. U.S. Secret Service officers asked Acosta to relinquish his press pass shortly thereafter.

Read more: https://thehill.com/media/5890632-acosta-doj-anti-weaponization-fund/