{"id":13074,"date":"2026-05-22T20:15:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/22\/jan-6-prosecutor-trump-administration-targets-sue-over-weaponization-fund-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T20:15:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:15:42","slug":"jan-6-prosecutor-trump-administration-targets-sue-over-weaponization-fund-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/22\/jan-6-prosecutor-trump-administration-targets-sue-over-weaponization-fund-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan. 6 prosecutor, Trump administration targets sue over \u2018weaponization\u2019 fund – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A fired Jan. 6 prosecutor and a law professor acquitted in a federal criminal case brought by the Trump administration are among the plaintiffs who sued Friday <\/strong>to block a $1.8 billion dollar fund established to give payouts to allies of President Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia<\/a>, alleges that the \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund creates a politically discriminatory process that excludes individuals like the plaintiffs, who say they were mistreated by Republican officials and administrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy its own terms, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by \u2018Democrat\u2019 administrations, even though the current administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it,\u201d the suit states.<\/p>\n

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Floyd<\/a>, a career federal prosecutor who had been a deputy in the Capitol Siege Section and was fired by former Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> in June 2025, is one of the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, hundreds of people attacked the foundation of an ordered society by trying to stop the results of a free and fair election\u2014committing serious assaults on law enforcement and other crimes as they did so,\u201d Floyd said in a statement, referring to the failed effort by Trump supporters to stop the certification of Joe Biden\u2019s win on Jan. 6, 2021. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen, this administration pardoned them \u2014 removing the accountability that had been hard earned by victims, witnesses, law enforcement, and prosecutors and imposed by impartial jurors and judges. Now they are asking taxpayers to illegally reward them for their crimes,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Another plaintiff is Cal State Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello, who was acquitted<\/a> of an assault on law enforcement charge over an incident last summer in which he picked up a tear gas canister that had been deployed by federal agents during a protest against an immigration raid at a California cannabis farm.<\/p>\n

The city of New Haven, the National Abortion Federation and the watchdog group Common Cause also joined the suit. All the plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, a progressive nonprofit legal group that filed more than 150 lawsuits in the first year of Trump\u2019s second term. <\/p>\n

Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, told NBC News that the fund has a number of constitutional and legal problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s literally no legal authority for the fund,\u201d Perryman said. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to snap your fingers and it just appears. Congress hasn\u2019t authorized the fund. There\u2019s actually no legal authority to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization had sued the president\u2019s own administration for $10 billion<\/a> over the leak of his IRS filings, but his private attorneys dropped the lawsuit before a judge could weigh in on whether a court had the authority to hear the case<\/a>, given Trump\u2019s control over the Justice Department. <\/p>\n

The fund was established as part of a settlement agreement that was not overseen by the court.<\/p>\n

Two officers who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6 \u2014 former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges \u2014 filed a separate suit over what they described as a \u201cslush fund\u201d for \u201cinsurrectionists.\u201d <\/a>They argued the fund would \u201cdirectly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fired Jan. 6 prosecutor and a law professor acquitted in a federal criminal case brought by the Trump administration are among the plaintiffs who sued Friday to block a $1.8 billion dollar fund established to give payouts to allies of President Donald Trump. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}