The claims brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act — which allows for the recovery of damages for injuries caused by federal agencies and employees — don’t always raise eyebrows, much less grab national headlines. Ranging from slip-and-falls on government property to allegations of medical negligence by prison doctors, the claims usually fly under the radar.

But a brief the Justice Department filed in a Florida district court yesterday centers on a different, much newsier type of claim: those of a proposed class of 30 plaintiffs who allege injuries due to “excessive police force” on Jan. 6, 2021, and who therefore say they deserve compensation. 

Highlighted first by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, it might have escaped public notice entirely. In this case, the plaintiffs allege that on Jan. 6, “the police indiscriminately launched explosive munitions, chemical agents, and impact projectiles into a peaceful crowd and physically assaulted” people who had gathered on the grounds of the Capitol. 

They are asking that court to award them unspecified money damages under the FTCA because, as a direct result of the police’s alleged negligence and assault, they suffered one or more of the following: “bodily injury and resulting pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement, severe emotional distress and psychological trauma, mental anguish, inconvenience, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life, expense of hospitalization, medical and nursing care and treatment, loss of earnings, loss of ability to earn money, and aggravation of a previously existing condition.”

But interestingly, one of the department’s arguments as to why that case should actually be dismissed could explain why Trump and his allies sought to create the now dead — at least according to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — “anti-weaponization” fund in the first place.

Specifically, the DOJ argues in its motion to dismiss that the FTCA requires a person to make their claim in writing to the relevant agency within two years of the incident. The claimant is required to submit forms along with their claim for money damages “for injury to or loss of property, personal injury, or death alleged to have occurred by reason of the incident.”

The Justice Department also notes that if the claim is not presented in this manner in that time period, it “shall be forever barred.”

The DOJ argues that the plaintiffs in this case, who claim they were injured on Jan. 6, 2021, should have filed their administrative claim by Jan. 6, 2023. The department notes, however, that none of the named plaintiffs filed such claims until July 2025. Accordingly, the whole case should be dismissed, it contends, because all the named plaintiffs’ claims are time-barred under the FTCA. 

That interpretation of the Federal Tort Claims Act could make it similarly challenging, if not impossible, for most convicted Jan. 6 defendants to make out their own valid claims under that statute. Even assuming a Jan. 6 defendant could argue credibly that they were injured not on Jan. 6 itself but on the date of their conviction — or even their sentencing — they would have only two years from the date of their injuries to file their administrative claim. 

To circumvent this statute-of-limitations problem, some Jan. 6 defendants who have submitted FTCA claims have alleged that they are suffering ongoing harm. It’s unclear, according to reporting by Reuters, whether the DOJ will endorse that theory.

But the plaintiffs in the Florida case, whose claims the DOJ wants a court to toss, also tried that framing. They assert their losses are “either permanent or continuing” and that both the plaintiffs and proposed class “will suffer losses into the future.” Still, DOJ didn’t bite. 

That could mean scores of the estimated hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants who have submitted FTCA claims will be out of luck, despite attempts by Justice Department senior leaders to signal that they “continue to have a path for compensation even without the $1.8 billion fund.”

In fact, that realization could be why the anti-weaponization fund was created in the first place.

An August 2025 New York Times report detailed how a lawyer for certain Jan. 6 rioters publicly proclaimed that he had met with top officials at the DOJ, pitching an idea to create something that now sounds eerily similar to the now defunct $1.8 billion fund. According to the Times’ reporting, that lawyer further explained that the “voluntary nonjudicial resolution committee” he envisioned would consider each Jan. 6 case individually and then “assign them sums according to harms they had purportedly suffered at the hands of the federal government.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because the contours of the lawyer’s proposal are echoed in the description and operation of the anti-weaponization fund called for in Trump’s May 2026 settlement agreement with the IRS.

It’s also no accident that the same lawyer told the Times that while he initially planned to file cases under the FTCA, he recognized there was a serious obstacle: The statute has a two-year statute of limitations, and his clients would be asserting claims “for things that happened nearly five years ago.”

Perhaps that’s why Trump told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor yesterday that aside from the fund itself, there are no other viable avenues for compensating Jan. 6 defendants. He wasn’t bluffing; he was acknowledging a legal reality his own Justice Department has now admitted too.

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