Trump’s DOJ Sets Up Reparations Fund For Jan 6 Rioters And Other Non-Victims Of ‘Lawfare Weaponization’

Since the start of his second term, President Donald Trump has been toying around with the idea of paying reparations to Jan 6 convicts, in his ongoing effort to rewrite the history of what happened that day, as well as who ultimately caused it. And if the federal government paying reparations to people who tried to overthrow the federal government wasn’t absurd enough, Trump’s MAGA-fied Justice Department has set up a $1.7 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”  to pay restitution to people who allegedly “suffered weaponization and lawfare” under former President Joe Biden.

So, basically, we should be calling them Trumperations, not reparations — because what are we even supposed to be repairing here?

So, here’s what’s actually going on…

In January, Trump, the leader of the federal government, sued the federal government for $10 billion, which would be weird under normal circumstances, but in the MAGA Upside Down, it’s really just another Tuesday. Specifically, Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department because his tax returns got leaked while he was being investigated by the FBI. Then, last month, a federal judge essentially asked the president if he might be wasting the court’s time by suing the very federal government that he currently leads, using the DOJ, which has only existed to serve him and other aggrieved white men for practically the entirety of his second term.

“Typically, adverseness is found in a situation where one party is asserting its right and the other party is resisting,” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in an order, questioning whether an actual disagreement between parties even exist . “Consequently, if there is no adverseness, there is no case or controversy.”

The judge ordered both parties to explain “whether a case and controversy exists” by May 20, and Trump basically responded by moving to dismiss the suit, and now the DOJ is claiming that, in exchange for a settlement, Trump was granted a fund to get his self-serving, propaganda-bolstering, transparently corrupt Trumperations plan off the ground. (I mean, the department didn’t say it like that, because it would be far too accurate.)

From NBC News:

Justice Department officials announced that Trump and his co-plaintiffs would drop their IRS lawsuit, as well as other claims of damages, in connection with the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, and in connection with the Russian collusion scandal “in exchange” for creating the fund, which the Justice Department said set up a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”

The fund was established ahead of court deadlines in the IRS case, which would have required the Trump administration to explain whether there was an actual case to be heard, given Trump’s control over the Justice Department’s actions.

The massive fund would give Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump a mechanism to seek taxpayer payouts for their claims of government overreach. The fund could even issue “formal apologies” to people who made claims against the government, the announcement said. The fund will stop processing claims by Dec. 15, 2028, about a month before Trump’s second term is set to end.

The fund is reportedly capped at $1,776,000,000, which the DOJ says is based  “upon the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.” These people honestly expect us to believe the figure just magically landed on a number that begins with 1776, which represents the year the U.S. became a nation, and the title Trump and other Republicans use for various right-wing indoctrination projects that they pretend are efforts to teach a patriotic version of the nation’s history.

Obviously, this whole thing is just more evidence that the Trump administration is a white supremacist organization. Conservatives sneer at the very idea of paying reparations to Black people — because they stubbornly refuse to believe that two and a half centuries of slavery followed by another century of second-class citizenship had any reverberating effect on the current condition of Black America, and the disproportionate adversities we experience — but they’re fine with Trumperations being paid to largely Caucasian MAGA minions for reasons that are not tethered to any semblance of reality.

Then, there’s the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Trump and his team of comically incompetent DOJ prosecutors have spent the last year and a half launching lawfare cases or investigations — that didn’t even pretend to be non-political in nature — against political rivals like New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and, of course, former President Barack Obama. All of these lawfare cases have either failed repeatedly in court, or failed to even get off the ground in the first place because they were nonsensical. So, even if the many successful prosecutions of Trump, Jan. 6 convicts and other Trump allies were examples of weaponized lawfare, it would only mean all of Trump’s rivals were much better at it than him and the unqualified morons he appoints.

In fact, now that the fund has been announced, Comey is wondering where his piece is.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political or ideological reasons,” Comey told  CNN’s Jake Tapper, sarcastically. “So, I’m guessing I’ll be in line. I hope I’ll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sacked the Capitol.”

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be responding to questions about the fund the same way he used to respond to questions about Project 2025: by pretending he doesn’t know anything about it except, conveniently, how popular the idea is.

It’s worth noting that, on the same day that the Trump administration announced the fund, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, Brian Morrissey, who was confirmed by the Senate in October to serve as the Treasury’s top legal officer, stepped down from his position, making him the latest official to exit the revolving door of Trump officials who can’t or won’t hold on to their jobs.

This administration has been a demonstrable, observable disaster that more than 75 million people voted against.

Maybe we all deserve reparations, too.

SEE ALSO:

House Bill Would Prevent Jan. 6 Rioters From Receiving Taxpayer Money

Trump Tries To Rewrite The History Of Jan. 6

Donald Trump Wants To Give Reparations To Jan. 6 Insurrectionists