When President Donald Trump announced a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” on Monday, it sounded like a slush fund that could be used to pay out violent rioters who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Vice President JD Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed Tuesday that it could be used for that exact purpose. It’s becoming clear that Trump isn’t just committed to protecting the rogues who tried to overthrow the government — he could be trying to build an army of them.

There is no question that Trump’s new fund is an ideological project intended to bolster his authoritarian agenda. The fund amount is officially designated as $1.776 billion — a nod to the year of American independence and an effort to cast beneficiaries of the fund as patriots. It was announced by the Justice Department as part of a bizarre agreement under which Trump dropped a legally questionable lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a fund, which would, as Trump put it, reimburse people whom he believes were “horribly treated” by law enforcement under the Biden administration.

The fund will be overseen by a five-person commission appointed only by the Trump administration, will exist outside the purview of any external review process, and have the authority to issue formal apologies and financial awards to claimants. As Ray Brescia, a law professor at Albany Law School, wrote in a column for MS NOW, “It is hard to imagine a situation more susceptible to fraud, grift, corruption and abuse.”

As of now, it seems virtually any Jan. 6 insurrection participant — who would undoubtedly qualify as a “horribly treated” category of person in Trump’s eyes — could be eligible for money. In a press briefing Tuesday, Vance declined to rule out awarding claimants who assaulted law enforcement on Jan. 6. “I don’t rule things out categorically when I know nothing about a person’s individual circumstances,” Vance said. “We do have people who are accused of attacking law enforcement officers. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely ignore their claims.” 

Blanche sounded a similar note during a Senate hearing Tuesday. When asked whether members of militant groups — including the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers — could receive payments, he said, “Anybody in this country can apply.” And in a sly deflection, he added, “The commission will set the rules. That’s not for me to set.” But Blanche is the official who will be choosing who sits on the commission. 

Given that this committee is an unprecedented body, and that its clear function is to reward Trump’s allies, surely its members will be taking note of Vance’s and Blanche’s chilling open-mindedness.

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The emerging picture is that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” could be a way to offer cash to a pro-Trump paramilitary. The president has already taken extraordinary measures to try to rehabilitate Jan. 6 rioters, pardoning them and commuting their sentences en masse, describing them as peaceful “patriots” and “great people” who merely got a little excited during “a day of love.”  He has played renditions of the “Star-Spangled Banner” by the J6 choir, a group of men convicted for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack, during campaign rallies, and decried their incarceration as “hostage”-taking.

But now he’s taking it further by not just protecting them from accountability and celebrating them, but by offering them payments for breaking the law in the name of extending Trump’s power. 

Zeeshan Aleem

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.