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Jeremy Dalrymple – Should Jan. 6 rioters get taxpayer payouts?
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The Trump administration has scrapped a controversial $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund after Republican senators raised concerns that payouts could extend to participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Did the GOP make the right call? Jeremy Dalrymple, Associate Director and Fellow for the Governance Program at the R Street Institute, joins the show to discuss why the fund was rescinded, who could have benefited, and whether taxpayers should ever be responsible for these payouts.
Hey, welcome back to the Laris Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and Jeremy Dalrymple joins me, who's associate director and a fellow for the governance program at the R Street Institute. Jeremy, I'm glad you came on to talk about the fact that the Trump administration has now scrapped this anti-weaponization $1.8 billion fund after pushback from other GOP senators. I never understood why they would go that direction, but welcome to the program. Maybe we can bat this back and forth and help my audience understand what's happening and why it's happening.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Laura.
SPEAKER_00I guess the first thing I want to do Go ahead. I want you to give my audience whatever background you think they need to really understand this.
SPEAKER_01So it goes really back to the um like the lead up to the uh 2012 election, the IRS unlawfully released President Trump's tax returns. Yep. There was no question about this, that this was an illegal act that was done. And as part of it, he sued the IRS. However, he ended up settling with himself essentially. He settled with the DOJ, which he is in charge of. And as part of that settlement agreement, they reached two things. One, there was kind of an immunity deal, which I think we can just set aside for right now. And the second part of it was this anti-weaponization fund. And as you said alluded to, it's a $1.8 billion kind of slash fund for anyone who is like a victim of weaponization of the government.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Well, let me ask you this, Jeremy, because I think sometimes the dog that didn't bark is the most important one to pay attention to. Could Trump have said to the IRS, you uh you broke the law, you violated my rights, you released my information, I want a settlement, and I'm going to take the settlement personally. And maybe it wouldn't have been $1.8 billion, but he could have said, I want a settlement and you'll pay the money to me. Could Trump have done that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. And that would have been well within his rights. It's something the IRS has done before. And so it wouldn't have been anything out of ordinary for the IRS to settle with him and give him a monetary compensation for the harm that was done to him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Instead, he said, I don't want to take the money personally. I want to put it in a fund to compensate people who are the subject of weaponization of the DOJ and the legal process within the United States, both on J6 and in other circumstances. I thought that was a great solution because he's saying, I'm not going to take the money personally. I'm already a billionaire. I may I've made plenty of money. I'm making more money right now. But but this money is going to go to set right, set something right that the Congress probably would not go about setting right. Am I wrong in looking into that way?
SPEAKER_01I think somewhat. So I can't really speak to his intentions. I would say on the surface of it, it definitely looks altruistic. It's something that he's not going to be betting from personally. It's not money that keeps going to be coming to him, said it's going to be coming to other constituents and other American citizens. Right. However, it's the problem with is how it went about, though.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so what was the flaw in how they went about it?
SPEAKER_01So you can look at this. There's other settlements. Um, so this isn't something that's new or anything else uh that President Trump is pursuing. We saw Obama try to do something similar. And at the same time, when Obama did it, uh conservatives rightly had an outcry about it. So there was uh the settlements with I think it was Bank of America, and as part of it, it was significantly more than President Trump was asking for here with his 1.8 billion. Settlement there was 17 billion. And the problem was it wasn't going back to the American people, it wasn't going back to the uh US Treasury. Instead, it was a $17 billion slush fund for the Democrats to use, and it was supposed to go to NGOs and once who weren't party to the lawsuit. And that's the similarities that we have here is this was a lawsuit between President Trump and the IRS. And instead, when with the settlement and this anti-weaponization fund, it's now going to be benefiting people who weren't party to the uh settlement. So, here if there were people that were truly harmed by the weaponization of the federal government, which I think they're a plethora of examples of that. Uh, you know, I used to work for Senator Johnson, uh, one of the more conservative members of the Senate, and that was one of his big pushes was how the government was being used against American citizens. So I can tell you plenty of stories about that. But in this particular incident, uh it should have been people going ahead and suing the US government for times that it was weaponized against them. And that way they would have a case, and they would definitely be entitled to money from the judgment fund. But the way this is set up, it's kind of sidestepping what the judgment fund is intended for and sidestepping what Congress is meant to do. Congress has the power of the purse here.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And and should there be some compensation? Because, Jeremy, um, some of those people, the J6ers, in fact, I just I met one the other day uh that I didn't know was a J6er, but he's not a guy I I know on a regular basis. But he just said, Yeah, I'm one of those people from J6. And I said, you know, because I always thought it was wrong. There were many, many people who didn't do anything terribly offensive at all. They did nothing more than maybe the, you know, the legal equivalent of trespass, being in a public building when you're not supposed to be in a public building. Uh and and and then the process was used as the punishment to lock people up for long periods of time, deny them their rights. And there were a bunch of people who ended up being indicted, even though they weren't physically even present in the building on January 6th. And I thought, well, there should be some compensation for that, but I didn't see any inclination by the Congress or anyone else to go anywhere near the J6 problem and try to resolve it in some way. And it seemed like it was one that should have been resolved somehow.
SPEAKER_01I definitely think this is something for Congress to take on. As you said, why they haven't, that's anyone's guess. But when you have, you know, 535 members there, uh, there's 535 opinions what's going on. And as you said, with J6, it's definitely a sticky topic. To me, uh, historically, that time had always been open to the public because they, you know, did COVID, and I don't think this is time to get into all the wrongs that were done during the COVID period, uh, things that were closed when that should not have been. I think in this instance, Congress shouldn't have been closed for this. This is a public process of them certifying the votes, and historically it's been open to the public.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it should have been. And by the way, I can imagine other groups, for instance, all those different NGOs that tried to get tax exempt status leading up to the 2012 election, and I know we're well past the statute of limitations on that. I thought there should have been some compensation for some of those people uh because they were denied uh the proper tax treatment and they were denied their free speech heading into a major election because the Obama administration decided the IRS is going to be used as a weapon against against free speech. I mean, there are lots and lots of examples like that, but like you said, they have to be resolved the right way.
SPEAKER_01No, absolutely. And I think the other part of this argument here is looking at yes, it was very altruistic for President Trump to want to do this, but it's the way that this program and this process can be misused. So in the future, if we have a Democratic president, you know, the Congress has already said, no, we don't want to do like student uh loan relief programs. But he could use uh future Democrat president could use the same kind of process here to have a blank check for doing student loan relief, even though Congress has said no. Jeremy. That's why it's the problem opening the door for this.
SPEAKER_00Let me ask you a quick question. What if Trump had said, yeah, I want the settlement, pay it to me. I'm gonna take the entire sum and I'm gonna put it into a fund. Uh into a I'm in a creative foundation and it's designed to pay out, you know, to worthy, uh, you know, worthy uh uh uh uh uh people with a worthy claim of that they need some kind of compensation. If he had done it personally, instead of doing it as part of a government fund, would it have worked?
SPEAKER_01So I'll say the type of lawyer that I am is a congressional expert. Okay, but that sounds all good to me. It seems like a past monster at first blush.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like a what?
SPEAKER_01I said it's like a pass monster.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I was thinking, Jeremy, I mean, if I I don't like lawsuits in general, but if I ever had a lawsuit and I thought, look, I I make enough money, but I, you know, hey, I'll take the settlement, I'll put it in a fund, and we'll put it to some worthy cause. And uh and that sounded like the right way to do it. Maybe Trump should have gone about it that way. That is Jeremy Dalrymple, who's at the governance program at the R. Street Institute. Jeremy, thanks so much for the time.