What happened
Two police officers who helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, sued in federal court Wednesday to block anyone, including the rioters who beat them, from receiving payouts from his $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. House Democrats separately proposed legislation challenging the fund and promised a robust investigation if they win control in November.
Who said what
Using Trump’s “taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name” would be “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges said in their lawsuit. “No statute authorizes” this “corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that anybody could apply for compensation, including Jan. 6 rioters. “It’s abhorrent” to harm law enforcement, he told CNN, but “people that hurt police get money all the time” from suing the government.
What next?
Opponents of the fund “face high hurdles” to blocking the payouts if “Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, stays silent,” Reuters said. But if Hodges and Dunn can “demonstrate they have been harmed in some way,” they have several viable legal paths.
House Democrats have also proposed legislation that would block the fund