Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot sued President Donald Trump on Wednesday, seeking to block the new $1.8 billion “lawfare” fund set up by the Department of Justice to compensate Trump allies who claim they were victims of prosecutorial overreach.
“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name,” the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says.
“The fund, styled the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,’ is illegal,” the suit alleges.
“No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”
The two plaintiffs in the civil complaint are Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, an active officer of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington. In addition to Trump, the defendants in the suit are Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, left, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, right, and Michael Fanone, a former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer, arrive for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol hearing to present previously unseen material and hear witness testimony in Cannon Building on Thursday, June 9, 2022.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Dunn and Hodges were at the Capitol when it was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters, disrupting a joint session of Congress that was being held that day to confirm the electoral victory of Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The DOJ on Monday said that Blanche had created the fund as part of a settlement of a $10 billion lawsuit by Trump, his two eldest sons, and The Trump Organization against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of Trump tax records by an IRS employee.
Blanche is Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer.
The DOJ said the fund will “provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
“Weaponization” and “lawfare” are commonly used terms by allies of Trump, including Jan. 6 riot criminal defendants, his lawyers and legal advisors and others who were the subject of DOJ and state prosecutors’ investigations in connection with Trump’s false claims that Biden won the 2020 election by widespread ballot fraud.
“The Fund will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants,” the DOJ said in a statement on Monday. “Submission of a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim.”
Democrats in Congress have called the fund a corrupt “slush fund.”
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