Trump Declines to Rule Out Payments to Jan. 6 Rioters from Anti-Weaponization Fund

On May 18, 2026, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — a $1.776 billion pool of taxpayer money designed to compensate individuals who claim they were victims of political persecution by the federal government [1]. Within two weeks, the fund was blocked by a federal judge, challenged in multiple lawsuits, abandoned by the DOJ's own acting attorney general, and yet still alive in the minds of hundreds of pardoned Jan. 6 defendants who see it as their ticket to financial restitution [2].

The central question — whether people convicted of assaulting police officers at the U.S. Capitol could receive taxpayer-funded payouts — has drawn opposition not just from Democrats, but from conservative legal institutions, law enforcement officers, and appropriations hawks in Congress. The story of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is a case study in executive power, the limits of settlement authority, and the political afterlife of January 6.

How the Fund Was Created

The Anti-Weaponization Fund originated from a lawsuit filed by President Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Jr., and the Trump Organization against the Internal Revenue Service over the unauthorized disclosure of their tax returns [3]. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who served as Trump's personal defense attorney before joining the Justice Department — announced a settlement valued at $1.776 billion, a figure the DOJ said was based on "the projected valuation of future claimants' claims" rather than the value of Trump's own case [4].

The money was to be drawn from the Judgment Fund, a permanent, indefinite appropriation maintained by the U.S. Treasury since 1956 to pay court-ordered judgments and settlements against the federal government [5]. Congress originally created the fund to streamline payments, eliminating the need for individual appropriations for each settlement. A $100,000 cap was removed in 1977, making the fund effectively unlimited [5].

A five-member board appointed by the acting attorney general — with one member chosen by congressional leadership — would adjudicate claims from individuals who believed they had been subjected to "weaponization and lawfare" by prior administrations [4]. The fund was set to stop processing claims on December 1, 2028 [4].

Source: Congressional Research Service / Treasury

Data as of May 18, 2026CSV

Trump Declines to Rule Out Payments to Those Who Attacked Police

When asked directly whether Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted police officers should receive payouts from the fund, President Trump said: "I wouldn't be inclined to say so, but I have to see it" [6]. He did not close the door. In broader remarks, Trump defended the potential for payments: "If it was up to me, I'd pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed" [6].

Acting Attorney General Blanche likewise declined to rule out payments to those who attacked officers when questioned by lawmakers [7]. Vice President JD Vance also did not foreclose the possibility [7].

The refusal to categorically exclude violent offenders drew sharp responses. On January 20, 2025, Trump had issued blanket clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack — full pardons for more than 1,500 and commutations for 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy [8]. Among those pardoned were more than 600 defendants convicted of assaulting or obstructing law enforcement officers, including 170 who used deadly weapons [8][9].

Source: Just Security / DOJ Data

Data as of Jan 20, 2025CSV

The Scale of Officer Injuries

The attack on January 6, 2021, resulted in injuries to 138 officers — 73 U.S. Capitol Police and 65 Metropolitan Police [10]. Fifteen were hospitalized. Officers suffered traumatic brain injuries, cracked ribs, crushed spinal discs, chemical spray exposure, and stab wounds from improvised weapons [10]. One officer lost an eye. As of mid-2021, at least 17 officers remained unable to work, and the Capitol Police confirmed that some had acquired career-ending disabilities [11].

Multiple officers who responded that day have since died by suicide. The long-term psychological toll — including PTSD diagnoses — continues five years later [12].

Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the January 6th Law Enforcement Heroes Compensation Fund Act during Police Week 2026, modeled on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. The bill would establish a Special Master at the DOJ to adjudicate claims for physical injury, emotional trauma, and economic loss, with a minimum death benefit of $4,975,000 [13]. The bill has 50 cosponsors but faces long odds in the current Congress [13].

Constitutional and Legal Objections

Legal challenges to the Anti-Weaponization Fund came from across the political spectrum.

The 14th Amendment argument. Rep. Raskin and other constitutional scholars invoked Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that "neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States" [14]. If Jan. 6 defendants qualify as insurrectionists — a characterization supported by federal jury verdicts in seditious conspiracy cases — then compensating them with federal funds may be constitutionally prohibited [14].

Separation of powers. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called the fund "a wasteful, duplicative, cronyist subsidy that flouts legal and constitutional norms" [15]. Their objection centered on the fund's creation of "a new spending program without congressional authorization" — the settlement agreement's stated basis of "projected valuation of future claimants' claims" effectively appropriated money that Congress never voted to spend [15].

Self-dealing. Conservative lawyer Ed Whelan flagged "a glaring conflict of interest with Trump being on both sides of the claim" — as both the plaintiff in the IRS lawsuit and the head of the executive branch settling it [14]. USC law professor Adam Zimmerman said the fund exists in "a totally different solar system" from any historical precedent: "I don't even think we have a word for how unprecedented this is" [4].

Settlement authority vs. program authority. The R Street Institute, a center-right policy group, offered a pointed critique: "settlement authority does not equal program authority" [16]. The executive branch cannot use a lawsuit settlement to bypass Congress's power of the purse and create a third-party compensation program. R Street warned that the precedent would allow any future president to manufacture funds for political allies through similar mechanisms — a Democratic president could, for example, create an environmental or student debt relief fund the same way [16].

The Iran comparison. Critics have drawn parallels to the Obama administration's 2016 payment of $1.7 billion to Iran — $400 million in principal plus $1.3 billion in interest from the Judgment Fund — to settle a decades-old arms deal claim [5]. Congressional Republicans at the time held hearings titled "Oversight of the Judgment Fund: Iran, Big Settlements, and the Lack of Transparency" [17]. The Anti-Weaponization Fund, at $1.776 billion, slightly exceeds the Iran payment in size. Both drew accusations of using the Judgment Fund as an executive "piggy bank," as former DOJ lawyer Paul Figley put it: "The executive branch should not have its own source of funds" [5].

However, legal analysts note a key distinction: the Iran payment settled a recognized international claim with a foreign sovereign, while the Anti-Weaponization Fund creates a domestic compensation program for unspecified future claimants with no independent judicial review [4][5].

The Officers' Lawsuit

On May 20, 2026, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn filed suit to block any disbursements from the fund [18]. Both officers defended the Capitol on January 6 and sustained injuries. Both reported ongoing harassment and death threats from Jan. 6 participants [18].

Their lawsuit argued the fund violated constitutional provisions and federal law. They characterized it as a "sham" designed to benefit insurrectionists [18]. A federal judge in Virginia issued a temporary restraining order on May 29, freezing the fund pending litigation [2]. A bipartisan group of former federal judges filed an amicus brief asking the court to probe whether the settlement amounted to "unlawful collusion" [2].

Separately, a former Jan. 6 prosecutor filed suit to block the fund permanently [2]. A coalition of nonprofits and individuals brought a second federal challenge invoking the 14th Amendment [19].

The Fund's Apparent Death — and Afterlife

Under pressure from multiple lawsuits and congressional questioning, Acting Attorney General Blanche told the House Appropriations Committee on June 2 that the administration was "not moving forward with the fund, period" [2]. The DOJ subsequently informed two federal judges on June 5 that the cases were moot because the program had been abandoned [19].

But Trump himself muddied the picture the next day. Asked whether the fund was dead or merely paused, he said: "I'll have to ask the lawyers. I don't know" [6].

More critically, legal experts and Jan. 6 defendants alike have noted that the Anti-Weaponization Fund was never the only path to payouts. The Judgment Fund itself remains available for individual settlements, and the DOJ retains the authority to settle claims with pardoned defendants who argue they were wrongfully prosecuted [20]. As NBC News reported, "the Trump administration has the ability to give payouts to Jan. 6 rioters through an already existing mechanism: the Judgment Fund" [20].

Jan. 6 defendants have organized to file individual claims, and some have retained attorneys to pursue settlements directly with the DOJ [21]. The infrastructure of the Anti-Weaponization Fund may be gone, but the appetite for payouts — and the legal mechanisms to deliver them — persists.

The Case for Prosecutorial Overreach — and Its Limits

Defenders of clemency and compensation for Jan. 6 defendants point to documented instances of aggressive prosecution. The Supreme Court's June 2024 decision in Fischer v. United States narrowed the obstruction statute used against more than 300 defendants, ruling 6-3 that the law applied only to evidence tampering, not to physical obstruction of proceedings [22]. The ruling validated concerns that prosecutors had stretched the statute beyond its intended scope.

Federal judges, for their part, sentenced Jan. 6 defendants below prosecutors' requests in 82% of resolved cases, according to an analysis by The Intercept [23]. Judges imposed home detention instead of prison in 101 cases and probation in 135 cases [23]. This pattern suggests judicial skepticism of prosecutorial severity, though it also undercuts the argument that defendants were punished excessively — since judges themselves corrected for overreach in real time.

R Street acknowledged the underlying grievances as real: the IRS targeted conservative groups in 2012, the FBI categorized Catholics as potential domestic terrorists, and COVID-era government pressure on tech platforms raised serious First Amendment concerns [16]. But R Street concluded that the remedy — a $1.776 billion fund controlled by political appointees with no judicial oversight — was worse than the disease [16].

Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and University of Minnesota law professor, stated: "There is no evidence that the judges in these cases are handing out sentences that are excessive" [23].

Historical Precedents for Executive Clemency

Executive clemency for politically charged defendants is not unprecedented. President Clinton pardoned 16 members of the FALN, a Puerto Rican independence group responsible for bombings that injured law enforcement officers, in 1999. President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. Trump's own first-term pardons included political allies like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon [8].

But the combination of blanket pardons, followed by potential taxpayer-funded compensation, for people convicted of attacking the seat of government is without parallel. No previous administration has pardoned defendants convicted of assaulting federal officers and then contemplated paying them from public funds [4].

What Happens Next

Senator Susan Collins, chair of the Appropriations Committee, called the fund "highly irregular" and said it required "a lot more scrutiny" [3]. Several bills have been introduced to block future payouts: Rep. Deborah Ross, along with Raskin and Rep. Joe Morelle, introduced legislation to ban taxpayer payouts to Jan. 6 rioters [24]. Senator Alex Padilla and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced companion bills in the Senate [24].

The DOJ has told courts the Anti-Weaponization Fund is dead. But the Judgment Fund remains open, individual settlement authority persists, and the president has not ruled out alternative paths to compensation. For the 138 officers who were injured defending the Capitol — and for the legal principles governing how the executive branch spends taxpayer money — the $1.776 billion question remains unresolved.