Daly: The $1.8 Billion 'Stop the Steal' Monetization Fund
When election denial and January 6 revisionism just don't go far enough.
Earlier this year, shortly after the fifth anniversary of the January 6 attack, I had the opportunity to interview Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short. Short was inside the Capitol that day, alongside Pence, as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect the vice president and his family from rioters who were storming the building.
During our discussion, I brought up the topic of the alternate reality that President Trump continues to promote (and millions of Americans still subscribe to), that he won the 2020 presidential election, and that it was stolen from him. I asked Short if he believes the myth will live on for years to come in our country as a type of folklore, accepted and passed on by true believers (and charlatans alike) as conventional wisdom.
The bluntness of Short’s answer surprised me.
“I think, in many cases, the president has won,” he said. “Not only was he reelected, but in many cases, he’s revised the history of that day.”
Short and many others understand that, politically speaking, there was a big advantage to maintaining the ruse through the 2024 election. Admitting defeat would have put Trump in the same camp as former Republican nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, who retired their presidential aspirations after their respective general-election losses.
That’s typically how it works, after all — even for incumbents (as we remember with George H.W. Bush). The sense, by both the nominee and their party, is that they had their chance, it didn’t work out, and it’s time to go in a different direction. And of course, Trump and MAGA had a much harsher view of McCain and Romney, casting their losses as proof that they were eternal “losers” whose paths should never be followed again.
And yet, Trump, even with the huge advantage of incumbency, lost to Joe Biden — a far less impressive opponent than the one McCain and Romney lost to. Per tradition (and Trump’s own standards), he should have ridden off into the sunset as well.
But he didn’t, and his excuse for why he didn’t was that he’d never lost, and was therefore owed a second term. It was a profoundly dishonest and unpatriotic position (that led to terrible violence in the final days of his first term), but it ultimately kept him politically viable.
What Short had a harder time reconciling was why Trump has continued drawing media attention to the “stolen election” and January 6 since re-winning the White House (as he’s been doing for the last year and a half).
“Despite a lot of the president’s attributes and reasons that people support him,” Short said, “I think January 6 is not one of them.”
He’s right about that, but I think there’s a pretty clear-cut explanation: Trump’s insistence that the election was “stolen” was never primarily about politics. It was about his ego, and it continues to be.
For a malignant narcissist, losing to someone as feeble as Joe Biden carries with it a tremendous amount of psychological trauma. And because Trump can’t literally erase that defeat from the history books (despite his best efforts), the best he can do, while continuing the ruse, is punish those who stood in his way… and valorize those who supported him.
It’s really that simple.
It’s the reason why Trump pardoned close to 1,600 January 6 criminals (he calls them “patriots”) on his first day back in office, including hundreds who brutally assaulted police officers. It’s why he pardoned several members of his “stolen election” legal team and related allies. It’s why his DOJ is currently working to clear the legal records of convicted January 6 seditionists, who Trump had previously granted commutations. It’s why nearly $5 million was paid to the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was justifiably shot and killed by a Capitol police officer as she was breaking through a barricaded hallway mere feet from fleeing members of Congress. It’s why hundreds of detailed January 6 criminal charges have been erased from the DOJ website. It’s why the GOP Congress, for years, held up the installation of a Capitol plaque commemorating the bravery and service of police officers who fought off insurrectionists that day. And it’s why many GOP leaders still deny what happened in the first place.
But as we discovered last week, even all those things weren’t enough. The Justice Department announced the establishment of an almost $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to pay restitution to people who feel they were political victims of “weaponization” or “lawfare” at the hands of the federal government.
The specific amount will be $1.776 billion — presumably because if you’re going to set up a slush fund for indefensibly advancing a personal agenda, and rewarding people who committed crimes in your name, you might as well add insult to injury by evoking the birth of our nation, and attempting to make it all sound patriotic.
To no one’s surprise, Congress won’t be involved in managing the fund, and won’t provide oversight. Who gets paid from it, and the amount they’ll be paid, will be decided by a five-person panel appointed by — wait for it — Trump’s former personal attorney, and acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche. Also unsurprisingly, Trump himself will have the power to fire panel members, and the federal government won’t be required to disclose which individuals receive money, and what amount they’ll receive.
What a deal!
The fund hasn’t been activated yet (it’s still being set up), but a whole bunch of shady folks are already announcing their intentions to apply for a piece of the pie. As expected, scores of pardoned January 6 criminals are among them, including the worst of the worst. Proud Boy leader, Enrique Tarrio, who Trump freed from a 22-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy, plans to ask for millions. The same goes for Andrew Taake and Andrew Paul Johnson, whose criminal records include child sex crimes (Johnson’s currently serving life in prison for child molestation).
Other notable individuals preparing to fill out applications are Mark McCloskey (best known for pointing firearms at George Floyd protesters), George Santos, Rod Blagojevich, the soon-to-be released Tina Peters, and Mike Lindell (who’s looking to recoup $400 million that he says his pillow company lost as a result of his “stop the steal” stance). Even the One America News (OAN) network is considering getting in on the action, having faced costly legal trouble over its promotion of false election claims.
As a friend of mine said, “Toss a pile of money on the ground, and all the freaks come scrambling.”
If you happen to think the details of the Anti-Weaponization Fund sound glaringly corrupt and possibly even impeachable (the hypothetical equivalent of President Biden setting up a taxpayer fund to reward Antifa and BLM rioters), just wait until you hear how the fund came to be…
Back in January, President Trump sued his own IRS, demanding they pay him $10 billion over his tax returns being leaked years earlier (by an IRS employee who plead guilty to the crime in 2023). IRS lawyers prepared a proper, compelling defense against the suit, but Trump’s DOJ never showed up in court to use the defense. In fact, the department put forth no legal argument whatsoever, despite, among other things, Trump filing the suit too late. The DOJ was essentially going to concede the case, and the $10 billion (compliments of U.S. taxpayers), to Donald Trump.
The judge presiding over the case was understandably very suspicious, and called on the DOJ and Trump’s attorneys to explain what in the heck was going on. It looked to her like the two sides were colluding rather than sitting on opposite sides of the complaint. The day before their explanation was due in court, Trump abruptly dropped his suit, and the DOJ immediately announced a “settlement” with the president that included him ending his money request, the DOJ apologizing to him, the IRS dropping any and all audits of Trump and his family, and — last but not least — the creation of the federal fund.
And because Trump’s attorneys dropped the case entirely, to be settled outside of court, there was no “settlement of record” for the judge to review. She’ll never receive her requested explanation for what had gone on between Trump’s legal team and the DOJ.
So, if you think the only recipients of big-dollar amounts from the clandestine Anti-Weaponization Fund will be January 6 criminals, disgraced former officials, and a hodgepodge of cartoon villains and cable-news flunkies, you may want to put a little more thought into that.
And if none of this bothers you as an American, why doesn’t it? Even if you’re someone who believes that President Trump is God’s gift to our nation, and that he has never lost an election, do you think that he, his family, and his allies should have license to loot the U.S. Treasury in this way?
If you do, I’d love to hear why.