Working HARD on Crime DOES Pay…..
Donald Trump, the Felon, has his ‘Justice’ Dept. working a way to ‘reimburse‘ those who got caught tearing up the US Capitol….
The money coming from the United States Treasury taxpayer piggybank….
The promised end of President Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund won’t necessarily stop the Justice Department from making payouts to those who argue they’ve been wronged by the government and who are instead eyeing new pathways to access federal money.
After acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the controversial fund would “not be moving forward,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted that the aggrieved have always had a pathway for getting settlements from the government.
“We have a legal system already in place for people to make claims against the government. That does not need to be reinvented,” he wrote on social platform X on June 2, encouraging would-be claimants to pursue settlements under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).
The U.S. government has a limitless pot of money to pay out settlements for claims made against it that are held in the so-called Judgment Fund. Now many Jan. 6, 2021, defendants and others who say they were victims of weaponization have begun filing FTCA claims in the hopes of getting a payout through existing channels.
Michael Caputo, a former spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services under the first Trump administration, was among the first to apply for compensation from the anti-weaponization fund, arguing he was a victim of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation over a documentary he made about Hunter Biden….
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Under the FTCA, would-be claimants have two years after the date of an incident to file a claim. If the federal government denies it or doesn’t act within six months, they can bring the case in court. If the government quickly moves to settle, the payouts could be agreed to without any judicial scrutiny.
“It is conceivable that that is a pathway that they would try to go, and it’s important, I think, for Congress to fully understand that even if they do withdraw — or if Congress prohibits the ‘slush fund’ per se — that unless we also put guardrails around FTCA claims against the government, then they will just do it a different way,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) told The Hill….
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“The judgment fund was intended to allow the United States government to settle actual or imminent litigation in cases where you thought there was a risk of loss,” she added.
“These people were indicted by grand juries, they were tried by courts of law, many of them pled guilty or they were convicted by juries, they were sentenced by judges — there are tons of reasons why there should not be a viable malicious prosecution claim here.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is among those who have introduced legislation to block Trump’s anti-weaponization fund as well as a related memo from Blanche limiting Trump, his family and their businesses from having their past conduct and tax liability reviewed by the federal government.
On Thursday he introduced additional legislation, including one bill that would require any settlement sought by Trump to be reviewed and approved by a judge in order to certify the two negotiating parties are truly adverse.
The goal, Raskin told The Hill, is “so they can’t do an end run around their purported retreat from the slush fund.”….