Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche would have us believe the story ended when he declared President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund dead. It didn’t. Recent news this week shows the administration may not need that fund at all.
Two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general, the Justice Department announced a seven-figure payout to Paul Vaughn, an anti-abortion activist whom Blanche has described as a victim of Biden-era weaponization. Vaughn is not a Capitol rioter, and his case is not theirs. But The New York Times reported the settlement for what it is: proof that this DOJ is willing to use an existing federal statute — the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA — to compensate people it believes were victims of political prosecution.
The DOJ doesn’t need a new commission or a special compensation fund to if it chooses to compensate Jan. 6 defendants.
No commission. No $1.8 billion fund. No press conference about “victims of lawfare” seeking redress. Just a settlement, quietly reached, through the same legal machinery that hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants are now lined up to use.
That machinery didn’t appear this week. It was there before there was a fund, and it will be there long after Blanche has finished talking about the fund as though it were the whole story.
Congress enacted the FTCA to compensate people harmed by government negligence or misconduct. It has been used to resolve claims involving everything from medical malpractice at Veterans Affairs hospitals to the FBI’s failures preceding the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church. It was designed to compensate victims of government wrongdoing — not to become a vehicle for compensating people convicted in connection with the violent attack on the Capitol.
Nearly 600 Jan. 6 defendants have already filed claims under the FTCA, according to reporting from ABC News and The Wall Street Journal. Hundreds more are expected.
Even if you take Blanche at his word that the “anti-weaponization” fund is “dead” and “not moving forward, ever,” his assurance answers only one question: whether the administration will create a new compensation program. It leaves unanswered the one that matters most: whether the administration will use existing federal law to compensate Jan. 6 defendants instead.
Here’s what should concern every taxpayer, Republican and Democrat alike: the DOJ doesn’t need a new commission or a special compensation fund to if it chooses to compensate Jan. 6 defendants. Once the department agrees to settle a FTCA case, the Treasury Department’s judgment fund pays it automatically without a separate act of Congress. Any Jan. 6 defendant who believes he or she has a viable FTCA claim can attempt to walk through that same statutory door. Some are seeking millions of dollars apiece, according to Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and other lawmakers.
Congress spent the spring in an uproar over Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. That fight was necessary. But it was also, in a sense, the easy one. The fund was visible, unprecedented and tied to a president who has repeatedly, and without evidence, claimed the justice system was weaponized against him.
If Republican Sens. John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and their colleagues truly want to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to Jan. 6 defendants, Blanche’s assurances won’t do it.
The FTCA is none of those things. It’s an old statute, administered quietly, one claim at a time. That’s precisely what makes it more dangerous, not less.
If Republican Sens. John Cornyn, Thom Tillis and their colleagues truly want to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to Jan. 6 defendants, Blanche’s assurances won’t do it. Only Congress can. Lawmakers already have legislation before them: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s, D-R.I., bill barring settlements for defendants convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers, and Padilla’s broader proposal prohibiting federal funds from compensating anyone prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack.
Passing either bill requires no leap of faith in Blanche. That’s the point.
Congress spent months guarding the front door. Blanche says it’s closed. But the back door remains wide open, and hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants are already trying to walk through it.
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