WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged the Justice Department Wednesday to reconsider its openness to providing money from the Trump administration’s new $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police defending the Capitol.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
“The notion of the federal government doling out compensation to rioters who sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and violently assaulted members of the United States Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department on January 6, 2021 is absurd and offensive,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a letter first shared with NBC News.
In congressional testimony Tuesday, Blanche did not rule out the possibility that Jan. 6 defendants convicted of violent offenses against police during the attack on the Capitol could receive money from the fund.
In his letter, Durbin demanded transparency about who is eligible to receive money from the pool. He asked that the Justice Department hand over documents, communications and materials that detail the eligibility requirements for the fund by May 28, including the specific considerations made for people who participated in the Jan. 6 riot.
Durbin also requested the same documentation about the “ethics or conflict of interest” connected to President Donald Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which led to the fund’s creation, as well as from lawyers for the IRS who may have considered or recommended that the Justice Department dismiss Trump’s case.
“These failures to detail any eligibility criteria only compound he concerns that this nearly $1.8 billion fund was created and approved by the Department of Justice with no limitations on how the money will be disbursed and for the purpose of both shielding and rewarding wrongdoing by the President and his allies,” he wrote. “I cannot fathom a more irresponsible treatment of taxpayer funds.”
Durbin went on to name crimes that several convicted rioters were charged with after Trump pardoned Jan. 6 defendants when he returned to office last year.
“To prioritize rewarding these insurrectionists as if they have been victimized while hard-working, honest Americans struggle to make ends meet in this economy of skyrocketing food and gas prices is indefensible,” he wrote.
Two officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 sued Tuesday to block the establishment of the “anti-weaponization” fund, calling it a “taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Durbin’s letter.