The Justice Department told two federal judges on Friday that cases challenging President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization fund” are moot because the administration has abandoned the program.

The filings represent the first time the Trump administration has said in writing that it was no longer pursuing the fund, which was met with widespread criticism before acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier this week that it was being killed. A federal judge has already blocked work on the fund.

DOJ’s arguments come after Senate Republicans rejected multiple legislative attempts to kill it despite bipartisan concerns it would serve as a slush fund for Trump’s allies. Some members, including key Republicans, raised concerns that the fund lacks guardrails.

Lawmakers were particularly concerned that payouts would go to rioters, including those who assaulted police officers, during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, which the Trump administration didn’t immediately rule out.

Last week, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the administration from taking steps to set up the fund and barred it from releasing any funds from it. But that ruling was highly technical: It didn’t address the legality of the program but was instead intended to get the court time to review a lawsuit seeking to kill the program in full.

In filings Friday submitted to judges in Washington, DC, and Virginia reviewing challenges to the fund, DOJ attorneys pointed to those comments from Blanche and said that the cases no longer belonged in court since the fund “is now not going forward.”

“The equities and the public interest do not favor this court interjecting itself in a political process to shut down a fund that is already not going forward,” DOJ told US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia.

“(T)he fund has been the subject of vigorous public debate,” DOJ added. “That process may seem messy. But the push-and-pull of such debate is a feature of our constitutional republic.”

In the filings Friday, Justice Department lawyers told the two judges that the challengers in the cases, which include individuals, cities, organizations and government watchdog groups, had pushed dubious legal claims against the fund.

They leaned especially hard into an argument that the plaintiffs lacked the legal right – known as “standing” – to bring the cases in the first place because, they say, the challengers could not show how they were being harmed by the fund.