Earlier this week, President Trump’s pressure campaign accomplished a long-time goal: Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk who had been convicted of multiple state-level felonies related to election tampering. As I previously noted, Trump’s promises of “harsh measures” until Peters was released have created scandalous results:
Those subsequent “harsh measures” presumably include the Trump administration’s removal of the US Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, the dismantling of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the freezing of hundreds of millions in federal spending on social services, the cancellation of transportation grants to the state, and the veto of federal funding for a Colorado pipeline.
Perhaps Governor Polis … understood the President as sending a message—namely, compliance with presidential orders is the only way to end the budget pain that the president is inflicting on Colorado. But the Peters commutation sends a second message—namely, if you break the law to advance the president’s political prospects and get put in prison, the president will turn off the spigot of federal spending in your state until you are released. The president shouldn’t be in the business of distributing ‘get out of jail free’ cards to election tamperers, and Governor Polis shouldn’t be helping the president hand them out.
This week, however, Peters’ good fortune was just an appetizer—overshadowed by a lavish buffet promised to Trump loyalists. On Monday, the president announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund”: a roughly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate those who claim they “suffered weaponization and lawfare.” Does this mean that federal funds will go to the Coloradans who were injured by the Trump administration’s cancellation of Colorado grants, or by the transfer or dismantling of federal programs situated in Colorado, or by the president’s veto of Colorado pipeline funding?
Nope. But one very plausible recipient of the largesse of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is, apparently, Tina Peters. As Vice President Vance explained yesterday, she is an excellent candidate for an Anti-Weaponization Fund payoff. Vance—making one jaw-dropping claim after another—called Peters an “innocent grandmother … who is about to get out of prison, thanks in large part to the President’s good work in Colorado,” who “at worst … committed misdemeanor trespassing.”
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general of the United States, explained that “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.” Connoisseurs of irony will note that the cash value of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is set at precisely $1.776 billion, money that Blanche said would fund “a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
All of this is, of course, grotesque.
It is grotesque because the invocation of Tina Peters is a tell. It is a tipoff that is impossible to ignore: The Anti-Weaponization funds are meant to go to the president’s political allies, the alleged victims of “weaponization and lawfare.”
It is grotesque because these funds will not be awarded by judges or neutral administrators. Instead, the beneficiaries will be chosen by a five-person committee, whose members will be selected by Attorney General Todd Blanche. (Before Blanche was the acting attorney general, he was the President’s personal lawyer, defending Trump against multiple criminal prosecutions.)
It is grotesque because we all know that there are victims of the current president’s weaponization and lawfare who will never see a dime of compensation. There is no reason to believe that the Trump-appointed committee in charge of the Anti-Weaponization Fund will ever compensate former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted last month for threatening the president. That threat consisted of posting a photograph of seashells that depicted the phrase “86 47.” There is no reason to believe that the Anti-Weaponization Fund will ever compensate Senator Mark Kelly for the Pentagon’s attempt to downgrade his retirement rank and pay. That attempt was based on Kelly’s legally uncontroversial public statements—that servicemembers can and must refuse illegal orders.
It is grotesque because when the president was asked whether people who had committed acts of violence during the Capitol riot of January 6 could be eligible beneficiaries of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, Trump declined to answer and insisted that he knew “very little” about how the Fund would work. How very convenient it will be to have an executive-branch tool of governance that the president bears no responsibility for, and how very convenient it is that the Fund will end its operations six weeks after the election of 2028.
It is grotesque because it is wasteful and superfluous: the Trump administration has already pulled out the stops to compensate its allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted. In March, former Trump national security advisor (and pardonee) Michael Flynn received a seven-figure DOJ settlement after arguing that he was the victim of a politicized prosecution. In April, Trump adviser Carter Page received a $1.25 million DOJ settlement in compensation for his claims that he was illegally surveilled by the federal government—even though Page was never charged with a crime. It is almost unprecedented for the Department of Justice to offer such settlements when there is little or no reason to believe that the victim would prevail in court. In short, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is duplicative of a program that already exists—except that the new version lacks the minimal safeguards against awardee bias that judicial monitoring of settlements supplies.
It is grotesque because it trespasses on Congress’s spending power—the Fund makes an end run around any congressional authorization or input. It simply wields the claim-settling power of the Department of Justice as an illicit substitute for Congress’s power of the purse.
On a personal note, it is grotesque to me as a Reagan Republican. The Anti-Weaponization Fund is a wasteful, duplicative, cronyist subsidy that flouts legal and constitutional norms. It is a welfare program that, a decade ago, every single Republican in the US House and Senate would have condemned. Of course, it has become difficult to discern even a rhetorical commitment to fiscal conservatism in today’s Trumpified Republican Party.
But, most of all, it is grotesque because it is an eloquent symbol of Trump’s central narrative—that his supporters are victims who uniquely deserve restitution. Many Americans have done their best to overlook the president’s continued attempts to rewrite the narrative of the 2020 elections and of January 6—because the implications of Trump’s focus are more than a little disturbing.
Trump’s recitations of election conspiracies, his mass pardons of the January 6 rioters and his political supporters and allies, and his promiscuous transfers of public resources to benefit family and friends illuminate a species of presidential corruption that is unparalleled in American history. With the Anti-Weaponization Fund, this corruption achieves its zenith. And like a modern-day portrait of Dorian Gray, its frightening visage is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.