Officers who defended US Capitol on Jan. 6 sue to block 'anti-weaponization fund'

WASHINGTON (CN) — A pair of former police officers who clashed with rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, sued the Trump administration Wednesday to block the just-announced "anti-weaponization fund."

U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges filed the 29-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the money will go to Jan. 6 defendants and result in the "public financing of paramilitary organizations" in the country.

"In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrections and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name," the officers say in the complaint. "The fund, styled the 'anti-weaponization Fund,' is illegal. No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law."

The Justice Department announced the fund Monday after a federal judge allowed Trump to voluntarily dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service related to the leaking of his personal tax returns in 2020.

According to the Justice Department, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will appoint five members to run the fund, one chosen after consultation with congressional leadership and all removable by the president. The fund's board will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief to claimants.

The president has declined to close the door on Jan. 6 defendants applying for compensation, telling reporters Monday that while he was not involved in its creation, it would reimburse people who were "imprisoned wrongly" and who "turned out to be right."

"These were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it," Trump said.

The officers, represented by Samuel Ward-Packard of the Public Integrity Project, want a federal judge to declare the fund unlawful, block it and reverse any payments that have already been made.

According to the officers, the fund endangers their lives by encouraging those "who enacted violence in the president's name to continue to do so," citing the frequent death threats the pair have received for their opposition to the administration, as well as directly financing "the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries and their supporters."

They warn that far-right militia groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers will receive funds and use it to arm and equip themselves.

"The fund will grant their past acts of violence legal imprimatur," the officers say in the lawsuit. "And, most chillingly, the fund will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded."

Under the settlement with the IRS, the fund's payments will be unreviewable in the courts and the identity of claimants or their compensation amounts will not be made public.

The officers say the fund's creation violated the Administrative Procedure Act and was well beyond the Justice Department's statutory authority. They reject the government's position that it follows the same legal precedent that allowed former President Barack Obama to create a $760 million fund to redress historic racial discrimination against Black farmers.

Dunn and Hodges defended the Capitol on the lower west terrace, the site of the day's worst violence. Hodges specifically clashed with rioters in a tunnel on the terrace, where a rioter grabbed his face and tried to gouge his eyes out, and then was nearly crushed by the push of the mob against a set of doors leading inside the building.

The "anti-weaponization fund" is the latest effort by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 riot as a peaceful protest.

Upon returning to the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, the first executive order Trump signed was to grant a blanket pardon to 1,583 Jan. 6 defendants, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. He also commuted the sentences of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and 13 of his lieutenants.

On Jan. 6, 2026, the White House published a website that sought to place the blame for the riot on congressional Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and on the police present at the Capitol that day.

In the website's timeline of events, it describes the rioters as "patriots," blames the U.S. Capitol Police for escalating tensions and described the following criminal cases against rioters a "political persecution."

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.