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The Administration Redirected $1.8 Billion Into a Fund for January 6 Defendants. Capitol Police Got Nothing.

Resist Now Updated June 17, 2026 3 min read
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$10 Billion Settlement. $1.8 Billion Redirected. $0 to Capitol Police.

The administration sued the IRS (an agency under its own control) over tax return disclosures. It then engineered a $10 billion settlement and redirected $1.8 billion into the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a Trump-controlled compensation system with no congressional appropriation.

$10 billion settlement. $1.8 billion redirected. $335 million distributed to January 6 defendants. $0 to Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol.

Three hundred thirty-five million dollars has already been distributed. The primary beneficiaries are January 6 defendants and individuals who claim they were targets of federal investigations during the Biden administration.

Capitol Police officers who were beaten and hospitalized defending the building on January 6 have received nothing from the fund.

Why This Is Different From Normal Settlements

Federal settlements are routine. Redirecting settlement proceeds into a fund controlled by the president, distributed to political allies, with no congressional approval is not routine. That is the appropriations power being bypassed.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. The Anti-Weaponization Fund circumvents this by routing money through a legal mechanism that avoids the normal appropriations process. If Congress does not block it, the precedent allows any future president to create similar funds for any purpose.

CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) filed suit challenging the fund in May 2026.

What You Can Do

  1. Write your representatives about blocking the fund →
  2. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask whether your representative supports blocking the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
  3. Read the Ethics hub and the pardons pattern analysis.

Update, June 17, 2026: With the “anti-weaponization fund” on hold after bipartisan opposition, January 6 defendants are now pursuing compensation through the Federal Tort Claims Act, a process that gives the Justice Department complete and unchecked discretion to settle claims. Florida attorney Peter Ticktin, a longtime associate of Trump who represents many of the defendants, says he has filed roughly 400 FTCA claims and plans to begin filing lawsuits at a higher volume now that the six-month administrative waiting period has expired.

Nine plaintiffs, including Kenneth Joseph Thomas and John George Todd III, filed an FTCA suit in Washington, D.C., on May 29 seeking at least $1 million each; both were convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers and sentenced to prison terms of five years or more. Andrew Taake, who pleaded guilty to assaulting officers with bear spray and a whip-like weapon and was sentenced to six years, filed a separate FTCA claim seeking at least $2.5 million in damages.

Senator Adam Schiff of California has introduced legislation that would amend the FTCA to bar anyone pardoned for January 6 offenses from receiving a federal payout. Rupa Bhattacharyya, a former director in the Justice Department’s civil division tort branch and now legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, warned that without Treasury Department enforcement of existing judgment fund restrictions, “there’s no limit on what you can use that judgment fund money for, so long as someone files a bogus claim.”

Sources

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