1 00:00:00,884 --> 00:00:20,050 On Monday, this past Monday, May 18th, 2026, the Department of Justice announced that it was setting aside $1,776,000,000 of taxpayer money, not for disaster relief, not for 2 00:00:20,050 --> 00:00:25,534 veterans, for a thing they're calling the Anti-Weaponization Fund. 3 00:00:25,955 --> 00:00:28,517 And the dollar figure is not random. 4 00:00:29,078 --> 00:00:29,868 One... 5 00:00:35,657 --> 00:00:39,803 1776, the year of American independence. 6 00:00:39,803 --> 00:00:46,542 The same number the Proud Boys put on a planning document. 7 00:00:46,542 --> 00:00:48,708 1776 returns. 8 00:00:48,788 --> 00:00:55,252 They laid out a scheme to seize federal buildings and force a new election. 9 00:00:55,252 --> 00:00:57,633 That's not me drawing a line. 10 00:00:57,793 --> 00:00:59,624 That's the line they drew. 11 00:00:59,724 --> 00:01:01,915 and then they printed it on the check. 12 00:01:01,916 --> 00:01:03,667 Here's how the money came to exist. 13 00:01:03,667 --> 00:01:16,828 Earlier this year, Donald Trump, the private citizen, the plaintiff, the civilly liable rapist, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns 14 00:01:16,828 --> 00:01:18,369 during his first term. 15 00:01:18,370 --> 00:01:23,213 So you have Trump suing the IRS, which now Trump runs. 16 00:01:23,554 --> 00:01:27,397 A federal judge, Kathleen Williams, started asking hard questions. 17 00:01:27,481 --> 00:01:31,922 about how a sitting president can be on both sides of the same lawsuit. 18 00:01:32,302 --> 00:01:37,994 And before she could even, you know, declare a ruling, his lawyers just withdrew the suit. 19 00:01:37,994 --> 00:01:47,857 The judge said she'd been, in her words, stripped of jurisdiction because the settlement was never even filed in her court. 20 00:01:47,858 --> 00:01:50,739 A few hours later, the DOJ announced a deal. 21 00:01:50,739 --> 00:01:55,180 The plaintiffs, Trump, his two sons, the Trump organization, 22 00:01:55,408 --> 00:01:58,469 get a formal apology and no damages. 23 00:01:58,470 --> 00:02:13,618 And in exchange, the government stands up a $1.776 billion fund to pay other people who say they were victims of weaponization. 24 00:02:13,619 --> 00:02:18,582 The man who signed it is the acting attorney general, Todd Blanch. 25 00:02:18,802 --> 00:02:23,668 Before he was acting attorney general, he was Trump's personal 26 00:02:23,668 --> 00:02:25,839 criminal defense lawyer. 27 00:02:25,959 --> 00:02:34,723 The money comes out of something called the Judgment Fund, a standing Treasury account meant to pay for court judgments and legal settlements. 28 00:02:34,783 --> 00:02:44,107 Treasury has 60 days to move the cash into an account reserved, in the memo's words, for the sole use of the fund. 29 00:02:44,467 --> 00:02:51,130 And the very day Treasury was supposed to certify the payment, the Treasury Department's General Counsel resigned. 30 00:02:51,131 --> 00:02:58,415 93 House Democrats called it a specter of corruption unparalleled in American history. 31 00:02:58,555 --> 00:03:03,257 A civil rights attorney called it theft far worse than Watergate. 32 00:03:03,258 --> 00:03:13,223 And two of the police officers who were beaten defending the Capitol on January 6th have already filed suit to stop it because the people most likely to get paid out of this fund 33 00:03:13,223 --> 00:03:15,744 are the people who beat them. 34 00:03:15,995 --> 00:03:17,526 That's the worst part. 35 00:03:17,527 --> 00:03:20,298 They don't get paid as people who got a break. 36 00:03:20,299 --> 00:03:26,731 They get paid as victims, and victims in America are owed something. 37 00:03:27,172 --> 00:03:29,092 Victims get checks. 38 00:03:29,093 --> 00:03:35,890 So today we're gonna talk about how that inversion gets built, and why it isn't the first time this country has done it. 39 00:03:51,679 --> 00:03:52,889 Welcome back to The Overlap. 40 00:03:52,889 --> 00:03:54,670 I'm Joshua, flying solo this week. 41 00:03:54,670 --> 00:03:57,711 William's out in the ether doing things one does. 42 00:03:57,711 --> 00:03:59,751 So it's just me and it's a big one. 43 00:03:59,752 --> 00:04:03,733 I want to be precise about what this episode is and isn't. 44 00:04:03,733 --> 00:04:06,794 It's not a story about pardons, right? 45 00:04:06,794 --> 00:04:08,555 Presidents pardon people. 46 00:04:08,555 --> 00:04:09,395 They always have. 47 00:04:09,395 --> 00:04:17,417 Carter pardoned the draft Dodgers and Ford pardoned Nixon and Clinton pardoned Mark Rich and people lost their minds for a decade. 48 00:04:17,417 --> 00:04:21,182 And then Biden preemptively pardoned his son, Hunter. 49 00:04:21,182 --> 00:04:29,508 The pardon power is broad and ugly and it's been broad and ugly for 250 years. 50 00:04:29,728 --> 00:04:44,479 Trump used it on day one of his term, granting clemency to roughly 1600 January 6th defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 proud boys and oath keepers convicted of 51 00:04:44,479 --> 00:04:49,732 seditious conspiracy against the United States of America. 52 00:04:49,733 --> 00:04:50,944 That part's over. 53 00:04:50,944 --> 00:04:52,865 That's the visible event. 54 00:04:52,866 --> 00:05:06,137 This episode is about what comes after the pardon, the machine that takes people convicted by juries, sentenced by judges of violence against the Capitol, against the United States, 55 00:05:06,137 --> 00:05:13,403 against our democracy, and reclassifies them as victims of the government that convicted them. 56 00:05:13,404 --> 00:05:17,787 And then on the back end of that reclassification hands them money. 57 00:05:18,038 --> 00:05:28,301 The pardons were the headline, the fund is the foundation, and the foundation is the thing that is going to outlive all of us, which might be very short. 58 00:05:28,552 --> 00:05:30,753 I'm gonna do this in four moves, right? 59 00:05:31,373 --> 00:05:32,273 You know the formula. 60 00:05:32,273 --> 00:05:41,256 First, we're gonna talk about the history because we have done this exact thing before, after the Civil War, on a scale that reshaped the country. 61 00:05:41,736 --> 00:05:45,689 Second, we'll go into the machine as it actually exists. 62 00:05:45,689 --> 00:05:52,861 this week and what was put into place, where the money comes from, who controls it, who got fired to make room for it. 63 00:05:52,861 --> 00:05:55,031 Third, the people. 64 00:05:55,472 --> 00:06:01,913 Tarrio, Rhodes, Barnett, and on the other side of the ledge are the officers who held the line. 65 00:06:02,354 --> 00:06:06,175 And fourth, we're gonna talk about what it means and what you can actually do about it. 66 00:06:06,426 --> 00:06:09,547 One promise before we start, I'm gonna say the officer's names. 67 00:06:09,547 --> 00:06:12,209 Caroline Edwards, Michael Fanon, 68 00:06:12,209 --> 00:06:17,432 Harry Dunn, Daniel Hodges, Brian Sicknick. 69 00:06:17,433 --> 00:06:23,056 Because in every story about who gets a check, there's a parallel story about who doesn't. 70 00:06:23,057 --> 00:06:28,620 The selection of who counts as a victim, that's not a footnote to the political project. 71 00:06:28,620 --> 00:06:30,651 That is the political project. 72 00:06:32,557 --> 00:06:36,717 Richmond, Virginia, summer of 1890. 73 00:06:37,157 --> 00:06:42,357 20,000 people lined the streets, Confederate veterans in their old gray uniforms. 74 00:06:42,717 --> 00:06:44,777 50s and 60s now. 75 00:06:44,897 --> 00:06:50,457 25 years past Appomattox, marched behind a covered statue. 76 00:06:50,458 --> 00:06:52,818 The cloth comes off and it's Robert E. 77 00:06:52,818 --> 00:06:54,438 Lee on horseback. 78 00:06:54,738 --> 00:07:01,820 61 feet of bronze and granite, paid for partly by private donation. 79 00:07:01,820 --> 00:07:14,260 and partly by the state of Virginia, a state that 25 years earlier had been part of an armed insurrection against the United States of America, using public money to build a 80 00:07:14,260 --> 00:07:18,243 monument to the men who led that insurrection. 81 00:07:18,494 --> 00:07:19,915 But forget the monument. 82 00:07:19,915 --> 00:07:21,816 Let's talk about the pensions. 83 00:07:21,817 --> 00:07:26,661 After the Civil War, the federal government paid pensions to Union veterans. 84 00:07:26,661 --> 00:07:27,662 Normal. 85 00:07:27,662 --> 00:07:30,384 You fight for your country, your country takes care of you. 86 00:07:30,570 --> 00:07:35,843 By the 1890s, those pensions were the single largest line item in the federal budget. 87 00:07:36,063 --> 00:07:40,865 By some measures, around 40 % of all federal spending. 88 00:07:41,116 --> 00:07:47,399 Confederate veterans got nothing federal because they'd fought against the federal government. 89 00:07:47,720 --> 00:07:49,060 So what happened? 90 00:07:49,061 --> 00:07:53,683 Every former Confederate state stood up its own pension system. 91 00:07:53,703 --> 00:07:59,266 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, the Carolinas, 92 00:07:59,322 --> 00:08:11,802 They taxed their own citizens, including, and sit with this, the black citizens whose enslavement had been the cause of the war, and they paid pensions to the men who fought to 93 00:08:11,802 --> 00:08:13,922 keep those people enslaved. 94 00:08:13,923 --> 00:08:24,143 A black taxpayer in Mississippi in 1895 was funding a pension for the man who fought a war to keep his parents in chains. 95 00:08:24,623 --> 00:08:27,995 By the early 1900s in several southern states, 96 00:08:27,995 --> 00:08:34,795 Confederate pensions were the largest single expenditure in the entire budget, larger than education. 97 00:08:35,046 --> 00:08:36,536 How do you sell that? 98 00:08:36,537 --> 00:08:40,299 You change what the war was about and you change who the victims were. 99 00:08:40,299 --> 00:08:42,219 That's the lost cause. 100 00:08:42,360 --> 00:08:53,034 An organized decades-long propaganda campaign, the Daughters of the Confederacy, Veterans Association, sympathetic newspapers, and textbook publishers. 101 00:08:53,034 --> 00:08:53,885 Three claims. 102 00:08:53,885 --> 00:08:57,246 One, the war wasn't about slavery. 103 00:08:57,486 --> 00:09:01,067 It was about states' rights and Northern aggression. 104 00:09:01,528 --> 00:09:02,388 Two, 105 00:09:02,418 --> 00:09:05,669 The Confederate soldier wasn't an insurrectionist. 106 00:09:05,669 --> 00:09:08,150 He was a noble defender of his home. 107 00:09:08,591 --> 00:09:18,915 Three, the real victims were Southern whites who suffered occupation and reconstruction and the indignity of black people voting. 108 00:09:19,166 --> 00:09:20,987 I grew up in Louisiana. 109 00:09:20,987 --> 00:09:24,729 I went to school in the public school systems of Louisiana. 110 00:09:24,729 --> 00:09:27,910 I was taught in the nineties. 111 00:09:28,161 --> 00:09:32,167 that the Civil War was really about states' rights. 112 00:09:32,167 --> 00:09:34,180 It wasn't really about slavery. 113 00:09:34,180 --> 00:09:43,344 Slavery was a piece of it, but it was really about the right for a state to govern itself and not have the federal government intervene. 114 00:09:43,595 --> 00:09:46,357 All right, reframe the perpetrators as victims. 115 00:09:46,357 --> 00:09:51,880 And once the perpetrators are victims, the money isn't a reward for treason. 116 00:09:52,221 --> 00:09:54,102 No, that sounds wrong. 117 00:09:54,102 --> 00:09:55,903 It's restitution. 118 00:09:55,904 --> 00:09:58,225 You'd be a monster not to pay them. 119 00:09:58,225 --> 00:10:01,227 And the federal government eventually went along with it. 120 00:10:01,528 --> 00:10:13,085 In 1958, with almost no Confederate veterans left alive, Congress passed a law granting them status equivalent to Union veterans for certain benefits. 121 00:10:13,086 --> 00:10:15,049 Symbolic by then, sure. 122 00:10:15,049 --> 00:10:24,419 But the principle was set in federal law, the men who took up arms against the United States are equivalent to the men who defended it. 123 00:10:24,670 --> 00:10:31,397 Now, I want to be careful, because William would stop me here if he were here today. 124 00:10:31,648 --> 00:10:34,950 The Civil War is not January 6th. 125 00:10:35,291 --> 00:10:38,108 The scale is incomparable. 126 00:10:38,108 --> 00:10:42,397 700,000 people died in the Civil War. 127 00:10:42,398 --> 00:10:44,760 I'm not flattening it into a metaphor. 128 00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:47,181 What I'm pointing at is the mechanism. 129 00:10:47,502 --> 00:10:54,127 The way a defeated faction gets rebranded into a victim class and then they get paid. 130 00:10:54,128 --> 00:10:57,531 That mechanism is identical and it runs in five steps. 131 00:10:57,782 --> 00:11:02,894 One, an armed action against the legitimate government fails. 132 00:11:03,145 --> 00:11:07,126 Two, the participants face consequences. 133 00:11:07,467 --> 00:11:14,310 And three, a sustained campaign recharacterizes the action, not as an insurrection, but as patriotism. 134 00:11:14,310 --> 00:11:18,391 Not treason, but resistance to tyranny. 135 00:11:18,392 --> 00:11:24,422 And then four, once that takes hold amongst enough of the political class, 136 00:11:24,422 --> 00:11:32,562 Public money starts flowing to the rebranded victims and then five monuments everywhere. 137 00:11:32,813 --> 00:11:39,953 And we're already at step five, hostages, patriots, political prisoners, victims of a tyrannical regime. 138 00:11:40,113 --> 00:11:48,073 Put those transcripts behind the speeches at Confederate monument dedications in the 1890s and you really can't tell them apart. 139 00:11:48,073 --> 00:11:52,793 These phrases didn't appear in 2021 out of nowhere. 140 00:11:52,794 --> 00:11:57,678 They've got 150 years of scaffolding underneath them. 141 00:11:58,039 --> 00:12:00,740 And here's the part that should probably scare you the most. 142 00:12:00,741 --> 00:12:03,103 These structures don't unbuild. 143 00:12:03,364 --> 00:12:13,452 Once a pension system exists, once a class of beneficiaries is named, once there's an office to process the claims, it just keeps running. 144 00:12:13,552 --> 00:12:20,558 Long after the original coalition dissolves and the original justifications become kind of embarrassing. 145 00:12:20,809 --> 00:12:26,732 Now there are documented cases of federal widows' pensions being paid into the 2000s. 146 00:12:26,733 --> 00:12:39,030 A century and a half after Appomattox, a southern state was still cutting checks based upon a man's service in an armed rebellion against the United States of America. 147 00:12:39,281 --> 00:12:42,132 A pension is a story about who matters. 148 00:12:42,252 --> 00:12:45,994 The Confederate pension said Confederate soldiers matter. 149 00:12:45,994 --> 00:12:52,916 And the implicit second half of that sentence was always, and the people they hurt do not. 150 00:12:53,167 --> 00:12:58,269 So let's get concrete about the machine that exists this week. 151 00:12:58,269 --> 00:13:03,751 Two things are happening at the same time and you have to hold them together to see the shape of it. 152 00:13:04,012 --> 00:13:07,973 First thing, and this one started back in early 2025. 153 00:13:07,973 --> 00:13:09,394 is the purge. 154 00:13:09,395 --> 00:13:10,476 You remember this. 155 00:13:10,476 --> 00:13:14,029 Within days of the inauguration, the interim U.S. 156 00:13:14,029 --> 00:13:15,600 Attorney General for D.C. 157 00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:20,243 Ed Martin fired career prosecutors who'd worked the January 6 cases. 158 00:13:20,564 --> 00:13:25,708 One of them told Politico that 25 to 30 of his colleagues were all let go at the same time. 159 00:13:25,808 --> 00:13:32,033 The firing letters reportedly said, in effect, the reason was their role in the prosecutions. 160 00:13:32,033 --> 00:13:37,063 At the same time, DOJ leadership, a memo from Emil Bov, 161 00:13:37,063 --> 00:13:48,539 directed the FBI to hand over the names of every agent who'd at any time worked a January 6th investigation for quote, review. 162 00:13:48,790 --> 00:13:52,293 We're talking about potentially thousands of agents. 163 00:13:52,293 --> 00:14:00,188 The FBI Agents Association warned that it would gut the FBI and their ability to protect the country. 164 00:14:00,439 --> 00:14:06,007 Pam Bondi reframed it as rooting out improper investigative tactics. 165 00:14:07,069 --> 00:14:16,283 Asked about the firings, Trump said he hadn't heard about them, but added that it was a good thing because the people fired were very corrupt. 166 00:14:16,534 --> 00:14:18,735 So that's the first half of the ledger. 167 00:14:18,735 --> 00:14:22,217 The government is removing the people who built the cases. 168 00:14:22,217 --> 00:14:29,141 And the framing, now this is the important part, the framing is that they were the wrongdoers. 169 00:14:29,221 --> 00:14:40,037 The prosecutor who put a guy away for beating the shit out of a police officer with a flagpole is somehow recast as the abuser. 170 00:14:40,288 --> 00:14:44,300 The agent is recast as the persecutor. 171 00:14:44,551 --> 00:14:45,846 Hold that thought. 172 00:14:46,097 --> 00:14:47,907 The second thing is the fund. 173 00:14:47,908 --> 00:14:51,349 And the fund is brand new, like this Monday. 174 00:14:51,350 --> 00:14:56,451 Let me walk the mechanics because the mechanics are the scandal of all of this. 175 00:14:56,451 --> 00:15:01,973 $1.776 billion out of the Treasury's Judgment Fund. 176 00:15:02,333 --> 00:15:06,114 A five member commission appointed by the Attorney General. 177 00:15:07,635 --> 00:15:12,916 One member chosen, quote, in consultation with Congressional leadership. 178 00:15:13,167 --> 00:15:14,882 The rest by Blanche. 179 00:15:15,133 --> 00:15:17,804 The commission writes its own eligibility rules. 180 00:15:17,804 --> 00:15:26,308 The settlement says it'll weigh the, quote, totality of the circumstances, including things like legal fees and prison costs. 181 00:15:26,568 --> 00:15:28,379 Submitting a claim is voluntary. 182 00:15:28,379 --> 00:15:38,754 There are, no partisan requirements, and the whole thing is set to wind down by December 15th, 2028, about a month before the end of Donald Trump's term, in case you weren't 183 00:15:38,754 --> 00:15:42,415 paying attention or don't have a countdown timer on your. 184 00:15:42,535 --> 00:15:45,581 person, your phone, your desk, whatever. 185 00:15:45,832 --> 00:15:48,583 Leftover money then reverts to the government. 186 00:15:48,584 --> 00:15:52,046 Now watch what happens when reporters ask the obvious question here. 187 00:15:52,306 --> 00:15:56,668 Can the people who assaulted the police on January 6 get paid out of this? 188 00:15:56,668 --> 00:16:07,655 And Blanche, at a Senate appropriations hearing said, and I quote this, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they're a victim of weaponization. 189 00:16:08,876 --> 00:16:14,237 Asks specifically about Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, he said the commission would set the rules 190 00:16:14,237 --> 00:16:17,209 quote, that's not for me to set. 191 00:16:17,571 --> 00:16:22,455 Vice President Vance, same day at the White House, he wouldn't rule it out either. 192 00:16:22,455 --> 00:16:29,352 He said, and I quote, I'm not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money. 193 00:16:29,603 --> 00:16:37,734 and that claims would be judged case by case, he acknowledged openly, we do have people who are accused of attacking law enforcement officers. 194 00:16:37,875 --> 00:16:39,458 That's a direct quote. 195 00:16:39,458 --> 00:16:40,971 He didn't say no. 196 00:16:41,222 --> 00:16:44,073 Nobody in the entire building will say no. 197 00:16:44,324 --> 00:16:46,684 And the lawyers heard that loud and clear. 198 00:16:46,685 --> 00:16:54,668 CBS reported within 48 hours, legal and PR shops in DC and New York were scrambling to position clients. 199 00:16:54,919 --> 00:17:03,102 One Republican attorney, Dan Bacher, said he's already fielding inquiries, said he'd help people get made whole. 200 00:17:03,103 --> 00:17:08,045 The first concrete claim we know about came from former Trump advisor, 201 00:17:08,045 --> 00:17:11,748 Michael Caputo, asking for $2.7 million. 202 00:17:11,748 --> 00:17:16,772 A conservative group called the Oversight Project said it would help people apply. 203 00:17:16,772 --> 00:17:22,476 The phrase one publicist used reportedly, all J-6ers will apply. 204 00:17:22,477 --> 00:17:26,339 Here's kind of the uh Iran-Contra of it. 205 00:17:26,580 --> 00:17:34,046 The defining feature of Iran-Contra was funding a political project outside the authority Congress had granted. 206 00:17:34,427 --> 00:17:36,308 Congress said that 207 00:17:36,559 --> 00:17:40,170 No, basically, via the Boland Amendment. 208 00:17:40,170 --> 00:17:45,192 So the administration built this off the books mechanism just to do it anyway. 209 00:17:45,392 --> 00:17:47,692 This is structurally that. 210 00:17:47,693 --> 00:17:52,394 As Jamie Raskin put it, only Congress has the power to appropriate money. 211 00:17:52,774 --> 00:17:54,935 And Congress never voted on this. 212 00:17:55,015 --> 00:17:57,856 The administration's defense is that there's precedent. 213 00:17:57,856 --> 00:18:01,627 And they point to this 2010 settlement called Keep Segal. 214 00:18:01,878 --> 00:18:10,246 where the Obama administration set up a $760 million fund for Native American farmers who'd faced discrimination. 215 00:18:10,497 --> 00:18:15,779 But Senator Chris Coons demolished that comparison in the hearing with one question. 216 00:18:16,100 --> 00:18:26,024 Did the Keep Siegel case involve a president suing his own government, then settling before any judge could actually review it? 217 00:18:26,025 --> 00:18:33,739 Because that one was approved by a court and had defined eligibility criteria, and this one approved itself. 218 00:18:33,990 --> 00:18:40,424 And why isn't this blowing up into hearings the way that Iran-Contra scandal did? 219 00:18:40,645 --> 00:18:50,191 Because the committee that would hold those hearings, the House Judiciary Committee, its weaponization subcommittee, is run by the people who built the narrative this fund 220 00:18:50,191 --> 00:18:51,792 operationalizes. 221 00:18:51,793 --> 00:18:58,777 The oversight body became the propaganda arm, and then the executive built the apparatus the propaganda demanded. 222 00:18:59,218 --> 00:19:00,519 This is a closed loop. 223 00:19:00,519 --> 00:19:02,250 There's no third party. 224 00:19:02,658 --> 00:19:04,363 with the independence to break this. 225 00:19:04,363 --> 00:19:08,834 There's no balance of checks and, you know, balances. 226 00:19:09,085 --> 00:19:20,827 Now to put two halves of this ledger together, because this is the whole episode in one sentence, the same Justice Department that fired the prosecutors who convicted these men 227 00:19:20,827 --> 00:19:25,061 is now standing up the fund that may pay those same people. 228 00:19:25,312 --> 00:19:32,353 The career attorney pushed into early retirement and the pardoned defendant cashing a federal check are not two separate stories. 229 00:19:32,414 --> 00:19:35,398 They are the two sides of one transaction. 230 00:19:35,649 --> 00:19:43,354 And let me put some names to it because sometimes abstracting these scenarios from the real people that it actually affects kind of numbs you. 231 00:19:43,674 --> 00:19:54,702 At this point, we're all so damn trauma-ridden and trauma-response that without understanding how this relates to the human being aspect of this, we sometimes forget how 232 00:19:54,702 --> 00:19:56,583 utterly absurd this is. 233 00:19:56,834 --> 00:20:03,297 Enrique Tarrio, National Chairman of the Proud Boys, he wasn't even at the Capitol on January 6th. 234 00:20:03,297 --> 00:20:13,400 He'd been arrested two days earlier and ordered to stay out of Washington, D.C., but a unanimous federal jury after a full trial with his own communications and evidence 235 00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,591 convicted him in 2023 of seditious conspiracy. 236 00:20:16,691 --> 00:20:20,972 They found he directed the Proud Boys' assault from a hotel room. 237 00:20:20,972 --> 00:20:25,513 22 years, the longest sentence handed to any January 6th defendant. 238 00:20:25,753 --> 00:20:31,655 On January 20th, 2025, his sentence was commuted and he walked out of prison a free man. 239 00:20:32,085 --> 00:20:36,877 Within months, he was on friendly television being treated as a wronged man. 240 00:20:36,897 --> 00:20:48,221 Under this fund, the framework that weighs legal fees and reputational harm, a man, a jury convicted of plotting to break the United States government could be owed money for the 241 00:20:48,221 --> 00:20:53,933 reputational damage of having been convicted of plotting to break the United States government. 242 00:20:54,184 --> 00:20:55,380 Like what? 243 00:20:55,631 --> 00:21:01,734 Stuart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, 18 years for seditious conspiracy, commuted day one. 244 00:21:01,735 --> 00:21:13,140 The jury found he'd staged an armed quick reaction force at a Virginia hotel, weapons readied to be ferried into Washington DC, if he gave the word. 245 00:21:13,141 --> 00:21:19,144 The investigation turned up an organization that had recruited former police, former military, intelligence veterans. 246 00:21:19,144 --> 00:21:21,385 The threat was not theoretical. 247 00:21:21,385 --> 00:21:23,366 The jury believed it. 248 00:21:23,750 --> 00:21:26,051 The sentence reflected it. 249 00:21:26,302 --> 00:21:27,842 He's now free. 250 00:21:28,062 --> 00:21:30,723 And quote, anybody can apply. 251 00:21:30,724 --> 00:21:42,139 And then Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man, feed up on Nancy Pelosi's desk, one of the most iconic images of that day, multiple felonies, civil disorder, obstruction of justice, 252 00:21:42,139 --> 00:21:46,631 theft of government property, because he took a piece of her mail. 253 00:21:46,632 --> 00:21:47,673 Pardoned. 254 00:21:47,673 --> 00:21:48,929 I bring up Barnett. 255 00:21:48,929 --> 00:21:52,251 deliberately because he's not a mastermind. 256 00:21:52,571 --> 00:21:59,014 He's like a guy who came because Trump told him to and made the worst decisions of his life in an afternoon. 257 00:21:59,355 --> 00:22:01,075 Like, hold my beer. 258 00:22:01,326 --> 00:22:05,709 And here's the tell, the framework treats Barnett exactly like it treats Tarrio. 259 00:22:05,709 --> 00:22:08,970 Same victim category, same eligibility. 260 00:22:08,971 --> 00:22:15,664 If this were an honest case-by-case review of prosecutorial overreach, you'd see distinctions. 261 00:22:15,664 --> 00:22:17,001 You'd see Barnett 262 00:22:17,001 --> 00:22:19,972 handled differently than the man who ran the Proud Boys. 263 00:22:20,353 --> 00:22:21,493 You don't. 264 00:22:21,493 --> 00:22:25,815 Because the framework was never about evaluating individual evidence. 265 00:22:25,815 --> 00:22:30,117 It's a blanket reclassification of a political category. 266 00:22:30,368 --> 00:22:31,969 January 6th, defendants. 267 00:22:31,969 --> 00:22:34,280 Into a victim category. 268 00:22:34,531 --> 00:22:37,513 The reclassification is the entire point. 269 00:22:37,514 --> 00:22:40,557 The facts of any one case don't actually matter. 270 00:22:40,557 --> 00:22:43,138 Now, the other side of the ledger. 271 00:22:43,479 --> 00:22:55,009 Carolyn Edwards, the Capitol officer who testified that she slipped in other officers' blood, that she was knocked unconscious against a concrete staircase, and she thought she 272 00:22:55,009 --> 00:22:56,790 was going to die. 273 00:22:57,041 --> 00:23:01,454 Michael Fanon, pulled into the crowd, beaten, tased, 274 00:23:01,455 --> 00:23:06,715 told him that they'd kill him with his own gun. 275 00:23:06,716 --> 00:23:10,296 Brian Sicknick collapsed and died the day after. 276 00:23:10,296 --> 00:23:15,156 More than 140 officers, Capitol Police, were injured that day. 277 00:23:15,156 --> 00:23:26,417 More than 600 defendants were accused of assaulting or impeding officers, with 175 of those people having weapons. 278 00:23:26,668 --> 00:23:29,650 None of those officers are on any victim list. 279 00:23:30,091 --> 00:23:35,414 Their injuries don't fit the framework because the framework isn't about who got hurt. 280 00:23:35,856 --> 00:23:38,077 It's about who got prosecuted. 281 00:23:38,078 --> 00:23:41,641 And two of them have now sued to stop the fund. 282 00:23:41,641 --> 00:23:50,088 Harry Dunn, retired Capitol Police, and Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan Police filed in federal court this week to block it. 283 00:23:50,469 --> 00:23:53,691 They called it a taxpayer-funded slush fund. 284 00:23:53,773 --> 00:23:56,424 to finance the insurrectionists. 285 00:23:56,425 --> 00:23:59,586 Their argument is brutally simple. 286 00:23:59,666 --> 00:24:05,427 The men who attacked them haven't just escaped punishment, they're about to be paid. 287 00:24:05,428 --> 00:24:10,529 The man who defended the building is not the recognized victim. 288 00:24:11,009 --> 00:24:13,290 The men who attacked the building are. 289 00:24:13,330 --> 00:24:17,351 The official designation of who counts has been reversed. 290 00:24:17,602 --> 00:24:21,163 And the designation comes with money attached, it always does. 291 00:24:21,292 --> 00:24:27,536 That's how the state declares who matters, by deciding whose checks to cut and which ones they're gonna cast. 292 00:24:27,787 --> 00:24:29,447 So let's pull it all together. 293 00:24:29,448 --> 00:24:45,088 The pattern is that American democracy, the current American state, has a recurring habit of taking the perpetrators of organized political violence after the violence fails and 294 00:24:45,088 --> 00:24:48,948 converting them into this protected class. 295 00:24:49,199 --> 00:24:53,479 Sometimes it takes decades, like the Confederate pensions, right? 296 00:24:53,479 --> 00:24:55,755 They need time to... 297 00:24:55,755 --> 00:25:00,958 build up the momentum, they need time to gather the forces. 298 00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:05,682 Sometimes it takes days, like a Monday DOJ press release. 299 00:25:05,933 --> 00:25:07,795 The mechanism is always the same. 300 00:25:07,795 --> 00:25:13,338 A sustained campaign that reframes the violence as virtue. 301 00:25:13,339 --> 00:25:22,695 And then an administrative apparatus that distributes resources to the newly virtuous, wiped clean of all of their sins. 302 00:25:22,696 --> 00:25:26,620 and the actual victims get edited out of the official story. 303 00:25:26,621 --> 00:25:30,024 Because their pain is now inconvenient. 304 00:25:30,275 --> 00:25:34,580 There's a darker layer to this, and the history kind of insists on it. 305 00:25:34,580 --> 00:25:39,725 The same apparatus that pays the perpetrators is often the apparatus that punishes the victims. 306 00:25:39,726 --> 00:25:50,207 After Reconstruction collapsed, the state governments that built the Confederate pension systems were the same ones that ran convict leasing. 307 00:25:50,458 --> 00:25:53,986 that looked away from lynching, that built Jim Crow. 308 00:25:54,237 --> 00:25:59,971 The state didn't just stop protecting the victims, it joined the people hurting them. 309 00:26:00,222 --> 00:26:02,363 The modern echo is exact. 310 00:26:02,364 --> 00:26:08,827 The same DOJ that may pay Enrique Tario is the DOJ that fired the prosecutors who convicted him. 311 00:26:08,828 --> 00:26:19,344 Not a neutral redirection of resources, an active hurting of one set of people to reward another set of people. 312 00:26:19,595 --> 00:26:22,967 What does that mean for you, sitting wherever you're sitting right now? 313 00:26:22,967 --> 00:26:27,190 Maybe you're in the car or listening to this in the shower or something, I don't know. 314 00:26:27,441 --> 00:26:36,546 It means the basic civic deal is being renegotiated on terms favorable to the people who broke it. 315 00:26:36,797 --> 00:26:44,811 The deal says participate in democracy, accept election outcomes, don't use violence and you have a place here. 316 00:26:45,062 --> 00:26:51,464 The people who broke that deal on January 6th are now being told by their government that they were right to break the law. 317 00:26:51,465 --> 00:26:53,966 That they were the real Americans. 318 00:26:54,086 --> 00:27:03,688 And the people who counted the votes and guarded the building and prosecuted the attackers, they're the ones doing something wrong. 319 00:27:04,109 --> 00:27:11,831 And once that message arrives as actual money, it's not rhetoric anymore, it's policy. 320 00:27:11,832 --> 00:27:13,832 And policy is sticky. 321 00:27:13,833 --> 00:27:17,293 The Confederate pensions ran into the 2000s. 322 00:27:17,294 --> 00:27:31,367 If this fund builds out a permanent claims apparatus, decades from now, the government may still be cutting checks whose paper trail leads back to the insurrection, the attempted 323 00:27:31,367 --> 00:27:35,278 overtake of the United States government on January 6th. 324 00:27:35,279 --> 00:27:37,400 That durability is not a side effect. 325 00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:38,920 It's the design. 326 00:27:39,171 --> 00:27:44,013 And the deepest cost is the one that doesn't show up in any budget line. 327 00:27:44,014 --> 00:27:45,635 The chilling effect. 328 00:27:45,636 --> 00:27:52,619 A domestic terrorism researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, Jacob Ware, put the danger pretty plainly. 329 00:27:53,019 --> 00:28:02,283 The message is that criminal action against the election system, quote, will be compensated if done on behalf of the president. 330 00:28:02,534 --> 00:28:06,946 And that, he said, is antithetical to democracy. 331 00:28:06,990 --> 00:28:09,185 and a peaceful transfer of power. 332 00:28:09,186 --> 00:28:13,316 Think about every federal prosecutor and agent watching this. 333 00:28:13,799 --> 00:28:15,271 The lesson being, 334 00:28:15,522 --> 00:28:28,333 The lesson being taught is that doing your job, if it's politically inconvenient to a future administration, can and will be retroactively branded as misconduct, and you 335 00:28:28,333 --> 00:28:30,314 personally will pay for it. 336 00:28:30,315 --> 00:28:38,261 So the next time something like January 6th happens, some of the people who build the cases will hesitate. 337 00:28:38,262 --> 00:28:42,083 They'll think about the agents purged in 2025. 338 00:28:42,215 --> 00:28:47,917 They'll think about their pensions and their families, and some of them will look the other way. 339 00:28:48,168 --> 00:28:51,279 And that's exactly how a democracy gets weaker. 340 00:28:51,599 --> 00:29:05,013 Not in one dramatic stroke like uh overtaking the capital building, but in 10,000 small private calculations by individual public servants about whether the job is still worth 341 00:29:05,013 --> 00:29:06,243 the cost. 342 00:29:06,244 --> 00:29:08,005 The pardons were the headline. 343 00:29:08,005 --> 00:29:10,606 The fund is the foundation. 344 00:29:10,606 --> 00:29:16,397 And the foundation is what decides what kind of country we're standing in 20 years from today. 345 00:29:16,648 --> 00:29:22,552 We always try to close with three concrete things, not stay informed, specific things. 346 00:29:23,113 --> 00:29:25,816 One, support the officers directly. 347 00:29:25,816 --> 00:29:35,705 The Capitol Police Memorial Fund provides financial support to the families of Capitol Police officers killed or injured in the line of duty, and it predates January 6th. 348 00:29:35,705 --> 00:29:45,037 The people hurt that day, Edwards, Fanon, Dunn, Hodges, and many whose names will never, ever, ever make the news and you will never see or hear from them. 349 00:29:45,037 --> 00:29:54,269 are dealing with medical bills, lost income, the cost of mental health care, while the federal compensation machinery is being pointed at people who hurt them. 350 00:29:54,749 --> 00:29:57,610 Look that fund up, send what you can. 351 00:29:58,050 --> 00:30:00,931 If you can just tell somebody else about it, that's fine. 352 00:30:01,182 --> 00:30:04,523 Especially with the price of gas for this optional war. 353 00:30:04,524 --> 00:30:12,166 Two, if there's a federal employee in your life, a prosecutor, an FBI agent, a career attorney, a clerk, 354 00:30:12,334 --> 00:30:16,075 anyone who touches federal law enforcement, reach out to them this week. 355 00:30:16,275 --> 00:30:21,056 Not to interrogate them and ask them what's going on in their lives, just ask them how they're doing. 356 00:30:21,057 --> 00:30:29,959 The chilling effect I described is happening to real people right now, and the institutional support that used to backstop them is being dismantled. 357 00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:34,231 Personal support from outside the institution is gonna matter a lot more than you think. 358 00:30:34,231 --> 00:30:35,681 Reach out to your friends. 359 00:30:35,932 --> 00:30:38,263 Three, and the most direct, 360 00:30:38,361 --> 00:30:42,984 Find your member of Congress and find their position on the Anti-Weaponization Fund. 361 00:30:43,065 --> 00:30:47,669 If you're in a red state, you know where they stand, but make sure that they know where you stand. 362 00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:57,065 93 House Democrats have already moved to block it in court, and at least one Senator, Ruben Gallego, has pushed an amendment to choke off the money. 363 00:30:57,066 --> 00:31:04,850 But most members haven't been forced to take a clear public position because most constituents haven't asked. 364 00:31:04,850 --> 00:31:06,230 Call the office. 365 00:31:06,491 --> 00:31:09,232 The staffer who picks up is required to log it. 366 00:31:09,232 --> 00:31:16,096 Tell them specifically that you oppose paying federal money to people convicted of violent crimes against the government. 367 00:31:16,097 --> 00:31:20,535 call takes four minutes, members respond in aggregate to call volume. 368 00:31:20,535 --> 00:31:22,529 That's a real lever. 369 00:31:22,529 --> 00:31:25,213 It's a way we can actually push the system. 370 00:31:25,464 --> 00:31:26,524 So that's three things, right? 371 00:31:26,524 --> 00:31:38,214 The Capitol Police Memorial Fund, the federal employee in your life, your member of Congress, on this fund, none of them is gonna fix this by themselves. 372 00:31:39,155 --> 00:31:42,517 I've long given up on the idea that anybody's coming to fix this. 373 00:31:42,818 --> 00:31:50,834 Together though, with a thousand other small things, they bend the line, and the line gets bent by people who keep showing up. 374 00:31:51,085 --> 00:31:52,556 This has been the overlap. 375 00:31:52,556 --> 00:31:56,558 Full transcript and every source for tonight's facts are linked below. 376 00:31:56,558 --> 00:32:02,502 If this one mattered to you, send it to one person, not 10, one person you think needs to hear it most. 377 00:32:02,502 --> 00:32:05,863 We're available on fof.foundation. 378 00:32:05,884 --> 00:32:10,136 You can like us on Apple podcasts and Spotify. 379 00:32:10,136 --> 00:32:14,549 Please give us a rating and reviewing for this podcast, five stars, pretty please. 380 00:32:14,549 --> 00:32:19,061 It really does help us a lot and helps get our voice out there into the world. 381 00:32:19,312 --> 00:32:20,585 So yeah, that's it. 382 00:32:20,585 --> 00:32:23,424 One person, one conversation, one bent line. 383 00:32:23,424 --> 00:32:24,607 That's the work. 384 00:32:24,607 --> 00:32:27,052 Take care of each other and we'll see you next week. 385 00:32:30,717 --> 00:32:32,344 yeah, that's the overlap.