Immediately after the Trump administration unveiled its $1.776 billion “fund” this week, Democrats and legal experts didn’t just condemn the gambit as a “slush fund,” they also focused on which of Donald Trump’s allies are most likely to benefit from payouts.
One of the central questions was unavoidable: Would Team Trump start writing taxpayer-financed checks to Jan. 6 rioters?
The day after the initiative was unveiled, JD Vance spoke to reporters at length in the White House press briefing room, where the vice president left the door wide open to payouts to those who attacked the U.S. Capitol. Instead of ruling out the possibility of checks for convicted criminals who violently assaulted police officers, for example, Vance told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor, “We’re going to look at everything case by case.”
The Ohio Republican added, “Let’s turn the page on this thing that we did under the last administration where we tried to throw people in prison because they had the wrong politics,” pointing to developments that simply did not happen in reality.
A few hours earlier, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former Trump defense lawyer, made related comments during testimony before a Senate Appropriations Committee panel, though there was a line of questioning about a specific Jan. 6 rioter that stood out.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen reminded Blanche that the president pardoned one rioter who went on to sexually abuse children, noting that the criminal “actually tried to buy the silence of these children by saying that he would pay them some of the funds he was hoping to get from your slush fund.”
The Maryland senator asked the acting attorney general, “Can you commit to making the rules so that that person is not eligible for a payout under this fund?”
It should’ve been pretty easy for Blanche to say that the administration has no intention of rewarding child abusers with public funds. But that’s not what he said.
“Well, you’re obviously lying in your question, because there’s no way this person committed to that,” he told Van Hollen.
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As it turns out, the senator wasn’t describing a hypothetical monster. On the contrary, the Democrat was specifically referencing a Florida man named Andrew Paul Johnson, who received a Trump pardon early last year and was recently convicted of child molestation. According to prosecutors, Johnson tried to bribe one of his victims, claiming that he expected to get money from the Trump administration because of his role in the assault on the Capitol.
Blanche’s point emphasized the timeline. “You said ‘from the slush fund,’ Senator, and that didn’t exist when he said that,” he told Van Hollen as the back and forth continued.
That’s true, though the details matter: In March 2025, the president publicly endorsed the idea of a “compensation fund” for Jan. 6 rioters. Trump didn’t elaborate on the details at the time, but taken at face value, he appeared to describe, in a nationally televised interview, what would effectively be financial rewards for the criminals he pardoned.
In other words, there were reasons for rioters to think a check might be on the way.
With this in mind, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut proposed an amendment Tuesday to a pending spending package that would prevent payouts to pardoned insurrectionists who sexually assaulted children. Republicans balked, pointing to procedural concerns over Blumenthal’s measure.
I have a strong hunch we haven’t heard the last of this one. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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