Donald Trump Pardoned His Insurrectionists. Now He's Paying Them.
In January, Donald Trump sued the United States government for $10 billion over the 2020 leak of his tax returns, tax returns he had kept private, despite the precedent that Presidential tax returns be transparent. On Monday, the Department of Justice, who have been appointed by Trump, settled with him. The settlement does not pay Trump directly, instead, it creates a $1.776 billion fund, housed at the DOJ, to compensate people who claim they were “victims of weaponization and lawfare” under the Biden administration. The five commissioners who will decide who gets paid are appointed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defence lawyer, with Congress only having a say with one of the commissioners. Trump can remove any of the commissioners, for any reason. The payouts and their recipients will be hidden from the public. The people most likely to benefit are the roughly 1,600 January 6 defendants Trump pardoned on his first day back in office.
Earlier this year, at the Waldorf Astoria’s Peacock Alley, the DOJ’s then-head of its “weaponization” working group, Ed Martin, told Republican operative Norm Coleman over breakfast that the department would pay millions to pardoned January 6 defendants, even if it took until the end of Trump’s term. He estimated the pot at $40 million, only undershooting the announced fund by a factor of forty-four. Martin had said the same thing publicly a year earlier, on a conservative podcast: “You’re damn right I want to pay J6ers. If you got wronged by the government, then you should be made right. That’s America.” Martin is now the U.S. pardon attorney, still working out of the White House.
So when Senator Chris Coons on Tuesday asked Blanche whether he would commit that no one convicted of assaulting a police officer would receive a payout, and Blanche refused, saying that “anybody can apply,” the commissioners would set the rules. We must remind you that these commissioners can be dismissed without reason by Donald Trump.
He was declining to confirm what his own colleague had been planning for at least a year, despite those promises sitting clearly in the public record. U.S. Vice President JD Vance, was asked the same question at the White House, and gave substantially the same answer: “I’m not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money.”
These rioters were instructed to make their way to the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump, for their troubles, they’ve been rewarded pardons, and if no one intervenes, they will soon be offered a cash reward to supplement their get out of jail free card.
The fund’s other architect is Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis lawyer best known for pointing a rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. McCloskey now represents, along with attorney Peter Ticktin, more than 400 January 6 defendants. Both have been lobbying the White House for exactly this fund for fourteen months. McCloskey told NBC he was “pretty darn excited” and that the announced program was “very similar” to what he had been proposing. He would know. He proposed it. Ticktin, asked why Blanche had finally moved on something the department had previously been defending against, said the quiet part audibly: “I think because he’s looking for the position of attorney general, so now he has to show that he can perform.”
Trump rioters had already been aware a payout was coming, as shown in the case of the pedophile Andrew Paul Johnson. Johnson was pardoned for January 6 last year, however, he is currently serving a life sentence for child molestation, convicted earlier this year after, among other things, attempting to bribe his victim with the J6 compensation money he was already telling people he expected to receive. Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. asked on Tuesday whether Johnson would be barred from the fund, Blanche called the case “disgusting,” but did not rule out the idea of the pedophile benefiting from the Trump payout.
In another world, it may be shocking to see an insurrectionist pedophile face a possible payout from public funds, but this is the world where Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend sits in the White House, and truly, all cards seem to be off the table.