Mark Houck, a longtime anti-abortion activist and failed Republican congressional candidate, filed suit against the government following his 2022 arrest for allegedly shoving a 72-year-old clinic escort. His civil case did not fare well: A George W. Bush-appointed judge dismissed his lawsuit with prejudice.

MS NOW confirmed this week, however, that Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless agreed to a $1.1 million settlement with Houck.

If it seems as if the president’s DOJ has a pot of money it’s using to reward those politically aligned with the White House, it’s not your imagination.

It was nearly a year ago, for example, when Trump’s DOJ reached a settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot by a police officer during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of the agreement, the Republican administration announced plans to give roughly $5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Babbitt’s relatives.

The settlement was awfully tough to defend, especially given the weakness of the civil case, but it was the first prominent example of the Republican administration offering generous, taxpayer-funded payments to those favored by the president.

A few weeks ago, it happened again, when Trump’s DOJ also agreed to reward former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn with a $1.25 million check in response to an equally dubious civil suit.

It stood to reason that other Trump allies would see the developments and wonder whether they, too, might be able to dip their hands into the pot of money. With this in mind, MS NOW reported:

President Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recently renewed efforts to seek reimbursement from the Justice Department for his legal defense in Trump-related investigations, according to a person familiar with the request. 

Meadows first made the request to the Biden administration under federal law that offers protections for former government employees, but that administration took no action on it.

Meadow’s lawyer, George Terwilliger, said the request is hardly unusual, adding that protections exist to protect those who “get entangled in lawfare cases, simply as a result of doing their jobs.”

The trouble is, it’s tough to see Meadows as an innocent bystander who simply did his job.

Indeed, the former White House chief of staff has long been a central figure in the investigation into Trump and his efforts to seize power after losing the 2020 race. It was Meadows who was with Trump in the Oval Office during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It was Meadows who was involved in the fake electors scheme. It was Meadows who was in frequent communication with far-right GOP lawmakers about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

It was also Meadows who allegedly (and quite literally) set fire to documents in a White House fireplace, several times, after having important post-election meetings, right around the same time that he reportedly told Cassidy Hutchinson, one of his top aides, that “things might get real, real bad” on Jan. 6.

Naturally, federal investigators had quite a few questions for the former White House chief of staff, and Meadows racked up legal bills. If the latest reporting is correct, he now wants taxpayers to help pay him back for those bills, and if recent history is any guide, Trump’s DOJ likely will oblige.

As for the broader context, a related NBC News report added that Meadows was charged in state cases involving the 2020 election in Georgia and Arizona, and he pleaded not guilty in both cases. The Georgia case was eventually dropped, though the Arizona case is still pending.

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