Among those who could be eligible for payouts are members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
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During Senate testimony on Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told senators that anybody in the U.S. who feels they’ve been wrongly targeted by federal prosecutors or investigators will now be eligible for millions of dollars in payouts — including violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building.
The new “anti-weaponization fund” is the result of a settlement from a lawsuit President Donald Trump and his family filed against the IRS, in which they had sought $10 billion in damages. After dropping the suit, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the creation of the fund, which totals $1.776 billion, stating it will be paid out to individuals claiming to have been unfairly targeted by past administrations.
The president has been considering compensating the loyalists who attacked the Capitol on his behalf for over a year. He has already granted a blanket pardon to the more than 1,500 individuals who participated in that day’s violent breach of the building.
Asked by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) whether the fund could entail payouts to those individuals, Blanche indicated that it could.
“Anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they were victims of weaponization,” the acting attorney general said.
Van Hollen then asked whether this included members of white nationalist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who took part in the Capitol attack and were later charged and convicted with committing seditious conspiracy, before receiving commutations from Trump. Blanche deferred, claiming a commission yet to be established “will set the rules.”
Democratic senators condemned Blanche’s response.
“Rewarding individuals who committed crimes is obscene. Every American can see through this illegal, corrupt, self-dealing scheme,” Van Hollen said.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) agreed.
“This all seems to be an obvious abuse of power by the Department of Justice, by the president,” Reed said. “You’re his appointee, the IRS are his appointees, he’s the plaintiff, and the American people, I don’t think, are surprised that suddenly all this money is going to his friends or people that he has in his orbit.”
Other Democratic lawmakers have decried the creation of the fund as unlawful.
The fund is “an absolute violation of congressional spending power,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said this week. “Congress never voted for $1.7 billion for [Trump] to give away to his friends.”
“It’s utterly fraudulent, what they’re doing,” he added.
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