Justice Department tells judges it can’t comply with court-ordered deadline to release frozen aid funding

The Trump administration said in a court filing Wednesday it cannot comply with a federal judge’s order to release foreign aid funding by midnight, despite being directed to do so almost two weeks ago.

Lawyers for the Justice Department made the claim in papers filed to a federal appeals court seeking a stay of the lower court’s ruling. The filing said that if the D.C. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t pause the order, the government won’t be able to make the deadline because it will take “weeks” to free up the money it owes.

“[R]egardless whether this Court stays the district court’s order, agency leadership has determined that the ordered payments ‘cannot be accomplished in the time allotted by the district court,” their filing said.

“Additional time is required because restarting funding related to terminated or suspended agreements is not as simple as turning on a switch or faucet. Rather, the payment systems of USAID and State are complicated and require various steps before payments are authorized,” the government said in another filing, estimating the process would take “multiple weeks.”

**The government estimated the total amount of money it would have to free to be in compliance is about $2 billion. It said it expects to be able to free up roughly $15 million by the end of the day.**

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At a hearing Tuesday, attorneys for the aid groups said their clients had reached a crisis point, and had been forced to lay off employees while staffers faced legal – and in some instances physical – threats for non-payment from vendors and other creditors in some of the countries they operate in.

The judge asked a Justice Department lawyer about what steps the government had taken to comply with his order, and the attorney said he was “not in a position to answer that question.”

They’re lying of course, but it’s not like they’ll face consequences.