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Inside Trump’s $1.8 Billion “Anti-Weaponization” Fund: Who Stands to Cash In
There is a line forming in Washington that did not exist a week ago, and the people standing in it make for a strange tableau. A convicted seditionist sentenced to 22 years in federal prison stands near a former FBI director. A pardoned rioter who once stormed the Capitol shares space with a sitting president’s longtime political adviser. A pillow magnate who lost a defamation case to voting-machine companies waits behind a former county clerk recently released from state custody. None of them has filed a claim yet, because the application process does not exist yet. But all of them, and potentially thousands more, are now eligible to ask the United States Treasury for compensation from a fund the size of a small national defense budget.
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What unites them, in the eyes of the Trump administration, is that they were victims. What unites them, in the eyes of nearly everyone else watching this unfold, is something the administration would prefer not to discuss.
A Lawsuit Settled With Itself
The arrangement that produced the fund began with a lawsuit. President Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year for $10 billion, citing the 2019 leak of his confidential tax returns by Charles Edward Littlejohn, a contractor with the defense and intelligence firm Booz Allen Hamilton who later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined as plaintiffs. Related claims totaling roughly $230 million stemmed from the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and the Russia interference investigation that shadowed his first term.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney before joining the administration, oversaw the Justice Department’s response. Rather than litigate the case, his department settled it. On May 18, the DOJ announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” worth $1.776 billion, to be drawn from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, a permanent appropriation used to satisfy court judgments and settlements against the federal government.
The judge overseeing the IRS case, US District Judge Kathleen Williams, was not included in the settlement discussions. She had already raised a question that now hangs over the entire arrangement: whether the sitting president, suing agencies whose decisions are subject to his direction, could be considered “sufficiently adverse” to those agencies to bring a real lawsuit. Trump himself had previously acknowledged the strangeness of the setup, telling reporters last October that “it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”
How the Money Will Move
A five-member commission appointed by Blanche will decide who receives compensation and how much. Trump can remove any commissioner without cause. The commission is under no obligation to disclose its procedures, the identities of recipients, or the reasoning behind any award. Awards will be issued by majority vote. The Treasury Department has 60 days from the settlement’s signing to move the money into the fund, which will operate until December 2028, shortly before Trump leaves office. Any remaining money returns to the government at that point.
The criteria for eligibility are deliberately loose. The settlement instructs the commission to weigh the totality of the circumstances for each applicant, considering factors such as legal fees, prison costs, and lost business. There are no published caps on individual awards. There is no requirement for a hearing, no opportunity for public comment, and no judicial review of decisions.
The January 6 Question
The largest single group of potential claimants is the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Trump pardoned the vast majority on his first day back in office, freeing hundreds from prison and ending pending prosecutions. The fund opens a second channel of recovery: cash compensation on top of clemency.
Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who received the longest sentence of any January 6 defendant before being pardoned, told Reuters he intended to apply, hoping for between $2 million and $5 million. Peter Ticktin, an attorney who represents more than 400 January 6 defendants and attended the New York Military Academy with Trump, has been lobbying the administration for over a year. He suggested the concept in an email to the president in March. Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis attorney best known for brandishing a firearm at racial justice protesters in 2020, leads another sizable group of claimants and called the announcement very similar to what he had been proposing for thirteen months.
Jenny Cudd, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespass charge for her role on January 6, was blunter in her assessment to CBS News. All January 6 defendants, she said, would be filing. The news, she added, was circulating constantly through their group chats and across social media.
The question of whether people who assaulted police officers will be eligible has produced some of the sharpest political confrontations of the week. Pressed by Senator Chris Van Hollen during a budget hearing, Blanche declined to rule it out, saying only that “anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they are a victim of weaponization.” Vice President JD Vance offered a similar framing, telling reporters the cases would be evaluated individually and that those for whom the book had been thrown would be considered.
The Applicants Trump’s Critics Did Not Expect
If the fund were limited to January 6 defendants, its design would be controversial enough. It is not. The Justice Department has confirmed that the application process is open to anyone claiming to have suffered government weaponization, a category that in practice now stretches across more than a decade of investigations and prosecutions touching Trump and his circle.
Michael Caputo, a former Trump administration official who was investigated during the Mueller probe and never charged, has already submitted a formal request for $2.7 million in restitution. MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, who promoted false voting-machine fraud claims after the 2020 election and lost multiple defamation cases as a result, told CNN his company suffered $400 million in damages and considers itself among the most harmed. A lawyer for One America News confirmed the cable channel is seriously considering applying. Spokespeople for Fox News, which paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle defamation claims, and Newsmax, which paid roughly $107 million to settle separate cases, declined to say whether they would seek reimbursement.
The eighty-four Republicans who signed fake elector certificates in seven states after the 2020 election, several of whom faced state-level criminal charges, are also expected to apply. Tina Peters, the former Colorado clerk recently granted clemency by Democratic Governor Jared Polis after her conviction in an election-system breach, is being represented by attorneys who have called the fund great news. Vance personally vouched for her case, calling her an innocent grandmother who deserved compensation.
Then there are the applicants no one expected. Former FBI Director James Comey, who has been indicted twice since Trump returned to office, told CNN he was considering filing a claim of his own, noting drily that he hoped to be ahead in line of those who sacked the Capitol.
The Preview No One Heard
Months before the fund was announced, the rough outlines of what was coming were already being discussed inside Trump’s circle. According to NBC News, Ed Martin, the conservative activist who briefly led the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, told a former senator over breakfast that the administration would eventually dole out millions to pardoned January 6 defendants, even if the payouts had to wait until 2028. Martin estimated the total figure at roughly $40 million.
The actual pot is more than forty times that size. Martin, who hosted fundraisers for January 6 defendants on Trump properties before joining the administration, lost his bid for permanent confirmation as US Attorney for the District of Columbia after Senator Thom Tillis blocked the nomination over his vocal support for compensating Capitol rioters. He has remained influential in the White House and continues to serve as US pardon attorney. After the fund was announced, he praised the decision publicly, calling it a vindication of years of advocacy.
The Hidden Provision
Buried in the settlement is a provision that received less attention than the headline number but may carry the largest dollar value of all. The agreement bars the IRS from auditing past tax claims by Trump, his immediate family, and his businesses. Tax analysts contacted by news organizations estimate the savings at up to $100 million. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who led parts of the Mueller investigation and now teaches at NYU Law School, characterized the provision on NPR’s Fresh Air as a kind of civil pardon, granting Trump immunity on the civil side of the ledger to match the protection the pardon power provides on the criminal side.
Weissmann raised a further wrinkle that has yet to be resolved. The $1.776 billion, in his reading of the tax code, may legally constitute taxable income to Trump personally, regardless of how he chooses to distribute it. That question alone could occupy lawyers and courts for years.
Democrats Demand Answers, Republicans Distance Themselves
The political response has been swift and, in places, bipartisan. Democratic Representatives Jamie Raskin and Richard Neal sent a joint letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Blanche, and IRS chief Frank Bisignano demanding answers on award caps, public reporting requirements, and the legal authority for the fund’s structure. Senator Chris Coons announced plans to attempt to block the fund through spending-bill amendments. House Democrats had earlier introduced legislation to bar January 6 defendants from receiving such payments.
Two Capitol Police officers who defended the building on January 6 filed suit on May 21 seeking to halt the fund entirely. Their filing described it as a taxpayer-funded slush fund for political violence. Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that filed amicus briefs during the original lawsuit, has demanded that administration officials preserve their internal communications related to the settlement, the standard precursor to litigation.
Republican reaction has been notably muted. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he was “not a big fan” and saw no purpose for the fund. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, whom Trump targeted in his recent primary, warned that voters were focused on their own household budgets rather than what he called a slush fund with no legal precedent.
One concrete case captured the stakes of the eligibility question more sharply than any abstract debate. Andrew Paul Johnson, a January 6 defendant pardoned by Trump, was later arrested on child molestation charges and convicted earlier this year. Prosecutors said he had tried to bribe a victim with money he expected to receive from the Trump administration. Pressed by Van Hollen to confirm Johnson would be barred from the fund, Blanche called the case disgusting but refused to say whether he was eligible.
The Legal Reckoning to Come
The fund will almost certainly be challenged in federal court, likely on multiple grounds. Weissmann has sketched the most plausible legal theories: viewpoint discrimination in how awards are distributed, violations of the Equal Protection Clause, and procedural failures under the Administrative Procedure Act. Ninety-three members of Congress have already filed an amicus brief positioning themselves for litigation. The Trump legal team has argued the settlement is not reviewable by a judge, a claim that itself will be tested.
For now, the commission has not been appointed, the application process does not yet exist, and the Treasury has not moved the money. What exists is the framework, the political will to defend it, and a growing line of people calculating what they believe they are owed. Whether the American institutional response can keep pace with the speed at which this fund is being built is the question the next eighteen months will answer.