The Insurrection Payout Fund Is Dead. Long Live The Federal Tort Claims Act!

from the why-limit-yourself-to-$1.8-billion dept

It just wasn’t enough to pardon hundreds of people who raided the Capitol building to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss — people who assaulted police officers, smashed windows to gain entrance, shut down election proceedings for several hours, stole stuff from federal offices, and generally acted liked they intended to kill Vice President Mike Pence to prevent him from certifying election results.

No, Trump had to go further. He sued the IRS (as a non-president) because a government contractor leaked his IRS filings to the media. It didn’t matter that the leaker had already been convicted and served time for his criminal act. That wasn’t enough. Trump claimed he was owed $10 billion in damages for someone leaking documents every other presidential candidate has released voluntarily.

He didn’t get the $10 billion. But he did get a whole lot of money. Trump was back in the White House and had stocked both the IRS and DOJ with loyalists. The end result was never going to be any but this: Trump’s IRS and DOJ agreed to give Trump a $1.776 billion fund, presumably for the sole purpose of rewarding MAGA insurrectionists for their loyalty.

Less than two weeks later, the federal court system froze the fund and demanded the government explain how this wasn’t anything more than Trump utilizing two agencies he controlled to give himself a bunch of money he could spend at his discretion. It was yet another crossing of the Rubicon by the Trump administration, but at least this time there was some pushback.

Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund isn’t even popular within his own party. It’s not that the MAGA-cooked GOP isn’t up for some corruption, it’s that there are still a few Trump supporters within the party that believe what his supporters did on January 6, 2021 was inexcusable.

With the fund blocked by a federal court and very few GOP leaders willing to defend it, the administration has seemingly abandoned the prospect of forcing US taxpayers to hand out paychecks to convicted criminals.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t get paid. Lawyers seeking payouts for convicted insurrectionists are seeing if they can slip in the side door to pick up a paycheck, using a federal law that almost never secures wins for plaintiffs.

The defendants are pursuing their claims using the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows individuals wronged by the government to file claims for monetary damages. The justice department has complete and unchecked discretion over whether to settle the claims, giving the Trump administration a powerful vehicle to reward those responsible for violence on January 6. The claims would be paid out from the judgment fund, a perpetual appropriation allowed for by Congress and the same pot of money Trump’s $1.8bn slush fund was going to draw from. All of the defendants seeking compensation received a pardon from Trump.

The Supreme Court has been steadily shrinking the coverage provided by the Federal Tort Claims Act for years now, making it all but impossible to successfully sue the federal government or its employees for violating constitutional rights.

And one would think (if they didn’t think too long or too hard about it) that this would mean these pardoned insurrectionists and other MAGA loyalists would be shit out of luck. But two plaintiffs closely tied to Trump have already converted the FTCA into an ATM:

The justice department agreed to settle FTCA claims filed by Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser, and Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy adviser, for $1.25m each earlier this year.

The FTCA is only nigh-impermeable if the government decides to defend itself. These plaintiffs — and the opportunists representing them — are hoping the administration will just give them paychecks, rather than force them to actually engage in honest litigation.

And it’s a lot tougher for courts to deter voluntary settlements paid out by the federal government in cases where the DOJ does nothing more than ask plaintiffs how much money they’d like to have. That means that the existence/non-existence of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” hardly matters. Criminal loyalists like the ones listed below are more than likely going to be stuffing some taxpayer cash in their pockets in the near future.

Among those seeking money are Kenneth Joseph Thomas, an Ohio man who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison after being found guilty for assaulting several police officers. Video showed him shoving multiple police officers and throwing himself into a line of officers as he shouted for other rioters to “hold the fucking line”. Also seeking compensation is John George Todd III, a Missouri man sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty on several charges, including injuring a Capitol police officer.

[…]

Andrew Taake, a Houston man sentenced to six years in prison and who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with bear spray and a whip-like weapon, is also seeking at least $2.5m in damages. 

This is an inevitable reality. The administration definitely wants to pay these people for breaking laws on Trump’s behalf. And the DOJ isn’t going to do anything more than write checks because filing anything other than short statements announcing the impending settlement might give legitimate plaintiffs something to work with in FTCA lawsuits brought by people who didn’t break a bunch of federal laws in hopes of undermining democracy itself.

The FTCA can be beat. You just need to be the right kind of shitheel to take advantage of the thoroughly corrupt government you’ve chosen to support. So, it hardly matters whether or not Trump’s ill-gotten IRS settlement will ever be disbursed to his favorite criminals. The DOJ has an unlimited fund to use for FTCA lawsuit settlements that will be almost impossible for courts to block.

Filed Under: corruption, doj, ftca, insurrection, irs, january 6, rights violations, self dealing, trump administration