Jan. 6 police officers sue Trump to block $1.8B 'lawfare' fund
The Department of Justice agreed to create the fund to settle a $10 billion lawsuit by President Trump over the leak of his tax records by an IRS employee.
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Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot sued President Donald Trump on Wednesday, seeking to block the new $1.8 billion "lawfare" fund set up by the Department of Justice to compensate Trump allies who claim they were victims of prosecutorial overreach.
"In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name," the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says.
"The fund, styled the 'Anti-Weaponization Fund,' is illegal," the suit alleges. "No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law."
The suit came two days after the DOJ said that Trump had agreed to drop a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax information by an IRS employee in exchange for the creation of the new fund.
The two plaintiffs in the civil complaint are Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, an active officer of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington. Dunn is running for a congressional seat from Maryland as a Democrat.
In addition to Trump, the defendants in the suit are Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Blanche, who authorized the creation of the fund, is Trump's former criminal defense lawyer.
D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, left, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, right, and Michael Fanone, a former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer, arrive for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol hearing to present previously unseen material and hear witness testimony in Cannon Building on Thursday, June 9, 2022.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Dunn and Hodges were at the Capitol when it was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters, disrupting a joint session of Congress that was being held that day to confirm the electoral victory of Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The new suit says that because money from the Anti-Weaponization Fund is likely to go to Jan. 6 rioters, it violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted on the heels of the Civil War, says 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."
The suit says the Jan. 6 rioters engaged in such an insurrection against the United States "by attacking the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the lawful certification of a presidential election."
"Although Trump and his cronies have been secretive about the fund's ends, reporting leaves no doubt that it will be used, among other purposes, to pay the nearly 1,600 people charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021," the complaint says.
Their suit also says the new fund endangers their lives and safety by encouraging "those who enacted violence in the President's name to continue to do so."
"Dunn and Hodges already face credible threats of death and violence on regular basis; the Fund substantially increases the danger," the suit says. "Second, if allowed to begin making payments, the Fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters who threatened Plaintiffs' lives that day, and continue to do so."
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The DOJ on Monday said the fund will "provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare."
"Weaponization" and "lawfare" are commonly used terms by allies of Trump, including Jan. 6 riot criminal defendants, his lawyers and legal advisors, and others who were the subject of DOJ and state prosecutors' investigations in connection with Trump's false claims that Biden won the 2020 election by widespread ballot fraud.
"The Fund will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants," the DOJ said in a statement on Monday. "Submission of a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim."
Democrats in Congress have called the fund a corrupt "slush fund."
Money from the fund will come from the DOJ's existing "Judgement Fund," which the department uses to settle legal claims against the federal government.
On Tuesday, the DOJ posted on its website an addendum to the settlement, which said that under it federal tax returns filed by Trump, his family members, the Trump Organization, and related trusts and affiliates before this week are protected from being audited by the IRS or others.
The lawsuit by the police officers says that no federal statute authorizes the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, or the establishment of a five-member commission to administer it.
The suit also says the transfer of "$1.776 billion into the Anti-Weaponization Fund to settle Trump v.
IRS was patently not 'in the interest of the United States,' " but instead "was a misappropriation of taxpayer funds orchestrated by the President to reward his allies and the rioters who committed violence in his name."
