Trump Justice Department Creates $1.776 Billion Fund To Compensate Victims Of Weaponized Government, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That People Investigated For Crimes Were Not Being Paid For It

The Filing

WASHINGTON. In a court filing Monday, the Department of Justice announced the creation of a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, a taxpayer-financed pool established to compensate Americans who suffered the grievous harm of having the federal government look into whether they had committed federal crimes.

The fund, which draws its money from the Judgment Fund, a perpetual appropriation Congress created so the government could quietly pay off lawsuits, was announced as part of a settlement of President Trump's own $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Under the arrangement, the President resolved his personal case against the government by directing the government to set aside nearly $1.8 billion, a sum administration officials confirmed was rounded to 1.776 for reasons of patriotism rather than arithmetic.

"For too long, this country has weaponized its own justice system against innocent people, some of whom are the President, and some of whom merely stood beside the President on January 6," said one source within the administration, noting that roughly 400 defendants from the Capitol attack had already contacted a single Florida attorney to begin staking claims. "These are patriots who lost jobs, businesses, and reputations simply because they were captured on video losing those things. It is only right that the people who did not stop them be the ones to pay."

According to the filing, claims will be reviewed by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, empowered to issue both monetary awards and formal written apologies from the United States government to individuals it has determined were persecuted for being investigated. The commission is scheduled to stop processing claims by December 1, 2028, at which point any funds not distributed to the President's allies will be returned to the American people who supplied them.

Legal scholars described the mechanism as unprecedented, noting that it allowed a sitting president to settle a lawsuit against his own administration by having that administration pay his supporters, a structure they said combined the plaintiff, the defendant, and the beneficiary into a single unusually satisfied individual. A federal judge later paused the fund, prompting the Justice Department to announce that it would comply with the order while declining a request to state in writing that the fund was in fact dead.

At press time, the President had reportedly reviewed the list of eligible weaponization victims, located his own name at the top, and pronounced the process fair.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who settled his personal $10 billion suit against the government by having the government fund a $1.776 billion pool for which he himself qualifies as a victim.
§Trump-allied claimants and their attorneys, invited to convert political grievance into taxpayer-backed cash awards and government apology letters.
§The roughly 400 January 6 defendants, already lining up through a single attorney to seek payment for consequences that followed the attack on the Capitol.
§The five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, granted sole authority to decide which of the President's supporters were wronged and how much they are owed.
§Department of Justice leadership, handed a permanent instrument for routing public money to favored parties through the Judgment Fund, well outside the normal appropriations process.
§The broader Trump legal and political operation, which discovered that a lawsuit against the government can be won by the government paying its own side.
§Future administrations of any party, quietly handed a precedent for treating the U.S. Treasury as a fund for compensating the president's friends.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment