Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund
“President Trump’s administration created a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals, including Jan. 6 rioters, who believe they were wronged by the federal government. This move, seen as a validation of the rioters’ claims of mistreatment, has sparked criticism and raised concerns about encouraging political violence. While some rioters are excited about potential payouts, others question the process and the fund’s limitations.
The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol could get money from the government they attacked is the latest head-spinning twist in President Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6.
Antony Vo was at a friend’s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government — including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.
Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.
“I’m glad it turned into something,” he explained, “that could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.”
That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.
Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.
“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.”
The formal decision of whether to offer restitution to the rioters had been kicking around the Justice Department for months, delayed by internal wrangling. But in some sense, it had appeared inevitable that the Trump administration would ultimately funnel money to those who joined the mob on Jan. 6 given the president’s relentless efforts to whitewash the events of that day.
In one of the first official acts of his second term, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping proclamation that granted pardons to — or dismissed the charges against — all of the nearly 1,600 people indicted in connection with Jan. 6. He then began an aggressive purge of the federal agents and prosecutors who were handed the task of building criminal cases against the people who took part in the attack.
The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.
It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government — claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.
“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”
In a typical Trumpian move, the president has both played down his knowledge of the fund and praised it as necessary, telling reporters that while he did not know much about the proposal, it was put in place to reimburse people “that were horribly treated.”
“These were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it,” he said.
The fund has spawned wide blowback, including criticism from some Republicans. Critics have said the real corruption comes from Mr. Trump and the Justice Department, which hashed out details of the fund in a deal that was never filed to the federal judge who oversaw the suit against the I.R.S.
At the same time, experts on far-right extremism have raised concerns that giving money to people who stormed the Capitol — especially to those who assaulted the police — would only bolster political violence.
“It proves that extremism pays — literally,” said Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a nonprofit group that seeks to counter antisemitism and extremism. “Over the last decade, we’ve seen this trajectory of conspiracy theories on the fringes moving to the mainstream and being normalized because of Trump and other elected leaders.”
“Now,” Ms. Spitalnick added, “they’re not just being normalized, they’re actually being encouraged by financial incentives.”
At this early stage, many pardoned rioters have only started to muse on how they might spend a government payout. Among the ideas being kicked around: new cars, new houses, paying to get their names off Google and underwriting political campaigns.
The rioters are not, of course, the only people who could file claims to the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund. The deal that laid out how it would work specifically mentioned others who might seek payouts — including abortion protesters who faced prosecution during the Biden administration and organizations targeted by the I.R.S. “based on improper ideological criteria.”
There is, in fact, a long list of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit who have claimed they were wronged by federal investigations or prosecutions.
Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser, was jailed for four months after being found guilty of contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena from the House subcommittee that investigated Jan. 6. (The Justice Department has moved to drop his case.) Peter Navarro, the president’s former trade adviser, served a similar prison term on similar criminal charges.
Then there are the dozens of Trump aides and allies — including many serving in the current administration — who were witnesses in the two federal cases filed against Mr. Trump by the special counsel Jack Smith. The cases, which separately accused Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 election and of mishandling classified materials, wound up being dismissed after he won re-election, but those who were interviewed or appeared before grand juries were forced to spend significant sums on legal fees.
Appearing at the Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Blanche suggested that several Republican lawmakers whose telephone records were seized by Mr. Smith in 2023 might receive money from the fund. Even some of Mr. Trump’s political opponents have cheekily suggested that they might enter claims as well on the theory that the president had weaponized the Justice Department against them.
On Monday, for example, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director who has been indicted twice since Mr. Trump re-entered office, appeared on CNN, saying that — who knew? — he might ask the fund for money.
“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political or ideological reasons,” Mr. Comey said. “So I’m guessing I’ll be in line.”
For the moment, the fund has been capped at the patriotically symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, and many Jan. 6ers have already done the math in an effort to determine the maximum amount that each of them could get. If all of them sought money and received the same amount, the payouts would be around $1.125 million each.
But that, they are painfully aware, assumes no one else will file a claim.
“We’ve been trampled on so much, I think finally we feel like we’re getting a little something and maybe we’re relieved,” said Daniel Christmann, one of the rioters. “But this is chump change. Even when Trump divorced Marla Maples and he was getting interviewed on it, he admitted that a million dollars isn’t a lot of money.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. “
No comments:
Post a Comment