With Congress staring down yet another funding stalemate, Republicans urged President Trump on Monday to drop the Justice Department’s fund to pay victims of government weaponization. By mid-afternoon, it appeared they had been successful.
“This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise,” a Justice Department statement read. Last week, a federal judge halted any payments for two weeks while a legal challenge plays out. Instead of appealing, the DOJ announced that it would abide by the district court ruling.
The statement only pertains to the two-week pause, but official Washington is treating it as the wind-down to a controversial program that never fully got off the ground. The Justice Department did not respond to RealClearPolitics’ request for comment.
Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, publicly presented his application last month to join the five-member board overseeing complainant requests. Howell laid out a 10-step plan to process and adjudicate claims. He also suggested holding an event on the National Mall for January 6 defendants to share their stories. All plans are now apparently on hold. “The victims get victimized, once again,” he told RCP.
“They’ve got to fight this in court,” Howell added, arguing the White House should not let the fund lapse before it even starts. “Senate Republicans acted like Senate Democrats and held ICE and CBP hostage in exchange for killing this fund.”
The so-called “anti-weaponization fund” was expected to drop $1.776 billion into a longstanding, permanent account that the DOJ already uses to pay judgments and legal settlements. But this additional money was part of a deal Trump made with the Internal Revenue Service, in exchange for dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against them for a former contractor leaking his 2019 and 2020 tax returns. Trump said that neither he nor his family would receive any money from the fund, but the unprecedented agreement also included a promise to never again audit any member of the Trump family. In the days following the launch of the fund, the DOJ began deleting webpages that had documented charges against January 6 defendants.
In the past two weeks, several notable figures said they would apply for restitution. The list includes former Trump advisers Roger Stone and Mike Lindell, along with former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and former Rep. George Santos, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft in 2024 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. However, the Justice Department had not yet begun to nominate board members or set up a clear application process.
Cracks quickly emerged within the Republican Party. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spent two hours on Capitol Hill fielding questions from GOP senators about how the fund would work.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, likened the fund to a curveball that took the conference by surprise. Sen. Ted Cruz called it one of the roughest meetings he had ever attended.
“We will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don’t, they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate,” the Texas Republican predicted on his podcast.
The Justice Department characterized the meeting as “healthy discussion of the settlement.”
The stalemate held up the passage of a reconciliation bill to fund the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection agencies. It was the final step in resolving a lengthy partial government shutdown earlier in the year. Sen. Lindsey Graham authored the strategy to fund the final portions through 2029 using a narrow procedural tool called reconciliation, which lowered the passage threshold from 60 votes to a simple majority.
“That’s Latin for, ‘We don’t need the Democrats,’” he told a group of South Carolina voters.
But the GOP lost their own conference unity after the DOJ announced the fund. Democratic senators promised to introduce amendments to block it, and they had enough Republicans on board to pass them. Instead of voting that weekend, the Senate canceled votes and left for a week of recess. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson met with Trump at the White House to discuss the fund. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he wanted the fund removed.
“I think the best way to get the reconciliation bill moving and across the finish line is to confine it to the issues we were addressing in the initial bill, which was CBP ICE and funding it for the next three years,” Thune said Monday.
Proponents of the fund said it was a welcome but abrupt move from the administration. Personal injury lawyer and former Senate candidate Mark McCloskey has spent nearly six years advocating for a restitution fund and representing other January 6 defendants. McCloskey and his wife attracted national attention after they stood in their St. Louis yard and yelled at BLM protesters while carrying a handgun and an AR-15 rifle. They pleaded guilty to felony charges but were pardoned by the Missouri governor in 2021, and a judge expunged their convictions in 2024. McCloskey said he wishes Trump had organized the fund differently.
“I would have thought Trump’s people would have vetted this with the Republican conference before launching it, especially prior to the midterms and in the middle of a war,” McCloskey told RCP. “It was apparent that it was an interesting concept but not fleshed out in any way where we knew how it would apply to our clients.”
McCloskey did not receive clarification from the Justice Department on how applications would work. He also argued that $1.776 billion was not nearly enough for thousands of likely applicants.
In a press briefing, Vice President JD Vance said each application would be considered on a case-by-case basis by the five-member panel. When asked if it would be open to defendants convicted of violent crimes, Vance repeated that each case was different and that the justice system assumes innocent until proven guilty. But red lines quickly settled around convictions, not allegations.
Former Vice President Mike Pence said the fund was a bad idea in a “Meet the Press” interview Sunday. Some protesters erected a noose and gallows with a sign to “Hang Mike Pence” on January 6, protesting his refusal to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“It’s deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6,” Pence said. “And I think that’s broadly held by most Republicans and most Americans.”
McCloskey counters that January 6 was a generally peaceful rally, telling RCP that he was even surprised by the restraint on the part of demonstrators. He argued that most if not all defendants did nothing wrong, and he claimed many entered the U.S. Capitol simply looking for restrooms that day. He said the anti-weaponization fund was essential to disincentivize future government from oppressing protesters.
The president’s gambit was always going to be a heavy lift. Of the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Washington that day, nearly 1,600 were criminally charged. The majority of them pleaded guilty or agreed. On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump pardoned all but 14 defendants, and he commuted the sentences of those 14.
McCloskey and Howell have both pushed separately for compensation funds. In six years, neither has seen much momentum.
“I’ve spoken to a number of Republican politicians, members of the House, senators, the Republican National Committee, and I recognized that there was very little enthusiasm about compensation for the J6ers,” McCloskey said. “I think people felt that it was political suicide to do this before the midterms.”
Now both men assume they are back to square one. Howell said he hoped the Senate would still pass a limited reconciliation bill to address immigration enforcement and leave the weaponization fund alone. The Justice Department did not respond to RCP’s request for comment on whether it is shuttering the fund. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams reopened the original Trump settlement and ordered the president’s attorneys to respond by June 12 to a motion alleging that it represented intergovernmental collusion.
Carolina Lumetta is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics. Follow her on X @CarolinaLumetta.
