The Trump administration has set aside $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to compensate people it deems victims of government “weaponization,” a figure that echoes the rallying cry of the Jan. 6 rioters who are now eligible to collect from it.
The dollar figure is not coincidental, according to former Justice Department prosecutors, congressional investigators and domestic extremism researchers. It is a direct nod to 1776, the year the U.S. declared independence from Britain. It is also a number that Capitol rioters invoked as they breached the building on Jan. 6, 2021 — in chants, on flags and in Proud Boys planning documents titled “1776 Returns,” which laid out a scheme to seize federal buildings and force a new election. Trump supporters co-opted the patriotic year as a rallying cry for their “1776 moment” to overturn the 2020 election results.
“That number didn’t just appear arbitrarily,” said Michael Fanone, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., who was beaten by rioters while defending the Capitol and lawmakers. “Like everything else, it’s a branding thing. Donald Trump is trying to rebrand January 6th insurrectionists as great American patriots.”
People convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol can apply for “formal apologies” and payments from the fund — including those found guilty of assaulting police officers.
Pressed by reporters Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance, who previously said violent insurrectionists would not be pardoned, refused to rule anything out.
“We’re going to look at everything case by case,” Vance told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor. “I’m not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche delivered a similar message to lawmakers Tuesday, telling them that eligibility decisions will rest with a new “Truth and Justice Commission.” Every member of that board will be appointed by Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney; only one appointment requires consultation with Congress, and the president “can remove any member,” according to a Justice Department announcement of the fund.
The White House, asked about the prospect of payments to rioters convicted of violent offenses and why the fund totals exactly $1.776 billion, referred questions to the Justice Department. The department did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
For former prosecutors and investigators who built cases against the rioters, the figure reads as a deliberate signal.
“So many of them use the rhetoric of the American Revolution to justify their actions,” said Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney who was chief investigative counsel for the House Jan. 6 committee. “It’s an alternate universe that there would be any credible claim that they are entitled to damages.”
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A former Jan. 6 prosecutor who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation told MS NOW that “1776” references were everywhere that day as Trump supporters and rioters created a narrative to “justify violence.”
“People were sending text messages about George Washington crossing the Delaware as they took a rebar from the inaugural stage and bashed police officers on the head,” the former prosecutor said.
The former prosecutor said the prospect of members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys receiving substantial payouts alarmed him.
“Think how much weaponry they could purchase with that; think how much money that they could use to recruit other people and recruit them with the message: ‘Look, if you commit crimes in the name of Trump, you’re going to be pardoned, and you’re going to be enriched.’”
Jacob Ware, who studies domestic and international terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations, said his first thought about the dollar figure was the same: It “was a nod to the organizers of January 6.”
“There is a broader signalling here that criminal behavior, criminal actions against our election system such as occurred on January 6, will be compensated if done on behalf of the president,” said Ware. “That’s antithetical to democracy and a peaceful transfer of power.”
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.