In a sit-down interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker on Friday, President Donald Trump declined to rule out using taxpayer money to compensate January 6 rioters who beat and pepper-sprayed police officers at the U.S. Capitol. The same week, Justice Department lawyers filed court papers opposing any permanent judicial block on the administration's $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, even while insisting the fund is already dead. And NBC News revealed that a separate, unlimited Treasury mechanism already exists that could deliver those payouts without a single vote in Congress.
The result is a picture of an administration publicly walking back a politically toxic fund while quietly preserving every route to pay the people it was designed to pay.
What Trump Said
Welker asked Trump directly: should people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers on January 6 receive payouts from the "anti-weaponization" fund?
"I wouldn't be inclined to say so, but I have to see it."
Trump's answer landed as a provisional hedge from a president who moments later described the fund as "a beautiful thing" he loved and thought was "so important." He told Welker he would pay qualifying claimants "the kind of money that they deserve" and said that "people have been destroyed" by what he called a weaponized federal government.
Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 participants on his first day back in office, including many convicted of assaulting officers. More than 140 police officers were injured on January 6, 2021 in what then-U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves called "likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation's history." Of the roughly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack, over 1,100 had been sentenced by the time the Biden administration ended.
The Fund That Won't Stay Dead
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress on June 2 that the Justice Department was "not moving forward with the fund, period." A federal judge had already temporarily blocked the fund pending a lawsuit, and congressional Republicans revolted over the possibility of Jan. 6 rioters receiving checks.
But on June 5, DOJ attorneys filed court papers asking Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia not to issue a more permanent block. The DOJ's position: because no money has moved and no commission members have been appointed, the lawsuits are moot and no injunction is necessary. A hearing is scheduled for June 12.
The practical effect of that legal posture is to keep the fund legally alive while the administration claims it has abandoned it. Critics noted that a president who calls the fund "a beautiful thing" is not a president who has given up on it.
The Backup Mechanism: The Judgment Fund
The more significant revelation came in a separate NBC News report: the Trump administration does not need the "anti-weaponization" fund to pay January 6 defendants. It already has one.
The Judgment Fund is a permanent, open-ended Treasury appropriation set up to "eliminate the procedural burdens involved in getting an appropriation from Congress to pay a particular judgment," according to the Treasury Department's own description. Congress authorized it decades ago. The executive branch controls it. Nobody needs to vote on individual settlements.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department and a former defense attorney for January 6 defendants including Peter Navarro, confirmed the scope of his own authority at a news conference: he already has power "to settle any claim that is brought against the United States of America."
Woodward said he would recuse himself from cases involving former clients. He did not address how many of the hundreds of January 6 defendants who have already retained lawyers to seek compensation would qualify for that recusal.
Payouts Already Flowing
The administration has not been waiting for a formal fund to start paying people. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed after jumping through a broken window of the House Speaker's Lobby on January 6, received just under $5 million to settle a lawsuit. Trump allies Mike Flynn and Carter Page have already received payouts from the Judgment Fund.
DOJ official Ed Martin, a close Trump ally and advocate for January 6 defendants, told a Republican ally earlier this year that Capitol riot defendants would receive "millions," and that the payments would come through by 2028 if not sooner.
Nine January 6 participants filed a lawsuit last week seeking more than $1 million each for "injuries and losses relating to the protest on January 6, 2021." Hundreds more have signed with lawyers to file claims.
What the Courts Are Watching
At least four separate lawsuits are seeking to block the "anti-weaponization" fund. One was filed by two Capitol police officers who protected the building during the attack and who called the fund a "slush fund" for insurrectionists. Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) filed a bipartisan brief in one case arguing the fund "constitutes an end-run around Congress's institutional authority."
The June 12 hearing will determine whether the existing temporary block gets extended. But legal experts have warned for years that the Judgment Fund is susceptible to executive-branch abuse, and Congress would need to act affirmatively to constrain it. So far, it has not.
Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official now at American University, warned in a 2015 law review article that the Judgment Fund's structure made it vulnerable to misuse. That warning went unheeded when it was written. The question for June 12 and beyond is whether courts can fill the gap Congress has left open.
Sources
- Trump doesn't rule out giving Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police payouts from the 'anti-weaponization' fund — NBC News
- DOJ could still pay Jan. 6 rioters even without 'anti-weaponization' fund — NBC News
- Justice Department urges judge not to block 'anti-weaponization' fund that it says is already dead — NBC News
- DOJ has other routes to payouts beyond Trump 'anti-weaponization' fund — The Hill
- DOJ confirms in court papers the "anti-weaponization fund" isn't going forward, asks judges to reject lawsuits — CBS News
- Jan. 6 rioters clamor for payouts from Trump's new 'anti-weaponization' fund despite backlash — WHYY/NPR
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