Two officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the creation of a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund. Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges are bringing the lawsuit because the fund could be used to compensate the Capitol rioters who attacked them and their colleagues. Both officers say they have faced continuous credible threats since that day.
“This slush fund is going to be used to pay the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers,” says Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, who is representing officers Dunn and Hodges. “It is going to give a presidential endorsement to these people, saying that not only … will they be put beyond the reach of the law, but they will actually be financially rewarded for doing so.” Ballou is also a former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Two officers who defended the Capitol January 6, 2021, have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the creation of the nearly $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund. Some are calling it a “thug fund.” The fund was announced by the Department of Justice earlier this month as part of a settlement with President Trump and his family. The president sued his own administration’s IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of his tax returns by an employee of a federal contractor. The $1.776 billion fund is intended to make payments to Trump supporters who say they were wrongly investigated or prosecuted by previous administrations.
Critics, which include some Republicans in Congress, have accused Trump of creating a slush fund for his allies, including insurrectionists who joined the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges are bringing the lawsuit because the fund could be used to compensate the Capitol rioters who attacked them and put their lives at risk. Both officers say they’ve faced continuous credible threats ever since.
On January 6, 2021, Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges was nearly crushed to death. In this tape, you hear officer Hodges as he’s pinned against a door by the mob.
DANIEL HODGES: Aah! Help! Aah! Aah! God!
AMY GOODMAN: The so-called anti-weaponization fund would be overseen by five commissioners. First, it was said four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general, though the attorney general, Todd Blanche, said he’d appoint all five, to serve at the pleasure of the president.
For more, we’re joined by Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, representing officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, the police officers suing the Trump administration over the $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump’s allies. Brendan Ballou is a former federal prosecutor who himself spent two years prosecuting January 6th Capitol rioters. His new book is titled When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Brendan. Start off—I mean, that chilling moment where Hodges is being crushed in a door as he shouts, screams, moans. Talk about what this suit is.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, so, let’s talk about officers Dunn and Hodges specifically. You know, you talk about that specific moment where officer Hodges was being crushed in the door in the tunnel connecting the Capitol to the inaugural stage. He could have died there later. Later, he almost had his eyes gouged out by another rioter. Officer Dunn was at one point surrounded by rioters who were hurling racial epithets at them. Both of them could have died that day.
And the scary thing is that the threat to these officers doesn’t end on January 6, 2021. By the mere fact that they’re continuing to speak out about January 6 to make sure that the history of that day is not forgotten or erased, they continue to receive threats, credible threats of violence, credible death threats.
And the real concern that we have with this slush fund that Donald Trump is creating is that this is going to be a way to funnel $1.8 billion to supporters of the president who have previously enacted violence in his name and who may be the very ones threatening our clients. So, in a very real way, this slush fund is about more than just corruption. This is about the personal safety of these officers who defended the Capitol on January 6.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to turn now to July 2021, months after the attack. The House of Representatives Select Committee Investigating the January 6th Insurrection at the Capitol held its first hearing, listening to testimony of four officers attacked by Trump supporters while defending the Capitol. This is one of the men that you’re representing, Brendan, U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, describing that racist abuse he and other Black officers encountered January 6th.
HARRY DUNN: More and more insurrectionists were pouring into the area by the Speaker’s Lobby near the Rotunda, and some wearing MAGA hats and shirts that said “Trump 2020.” I told them to just leave the Capitol. And in response, they yelled, “No, man. This is our house! President Trump invited us here. We’re here to stop the steal. Joe Biden is not the president. Nobody voted for Joe Biden.”
I’m a law enforcement officer, and I do my best to keep politics out of my job. But in this circumstance, I responded, “Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody?” That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink MAGA shirt yelled, “You hear that, guys? This [bleep] voted for Joe Biden.” Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming, “Boo! [bleep]!” No one had ever, ever called me a [bleep] while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer.
In the days following the attempted insurrection, other Black officers shared with me their own stories of racial abuse on January 6. One officer told me he had never, in his entire 40 years of life, been called a [bleep] to his face, and that streak ended on January 6. Yet another Black officer later told me he had been confronted by insurrectionists in the Capitol who told him, “Put your gun down, and we’ll show you what kind of [bleep] you really are.”
AMY GOODMAN: That was officer Harry Dunn testifying before the House of Representatives Select Committee Investigating the January 6th Insurrection at the Capitol. And this is officer Hodges.
DANIEL HODGES: On my left was a man with a clear riot shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against me and, with all the weight of the bodies pushing behind him, trapped me. My arms were pinned and effectively useless. Trapped against either the shield on my left or the door frame on my right, with my posture granting me no functional strength or freedom of movement, I was effectively defenseless and gradually sustaining injury from the increasing pressure of the mob.
Directly in front of me, a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my head, the straps stretching against my skull and straining my neck. He never uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams. I remember him foaming at the mouth. He also put his cellphone in his mouth so that he had both hands free to assault me. Eventually he succeeded in stripping away my gas mask, and a new rush of exposure to CS and OC spray hit me.
The mob of terrorists were coordinating their efforts now, shouting “Heave! Ho!” as they synchronized pushing their weight forward, crushing me further against the metal door frame. The man in front of me grabbed my baton, that I still held in my hands, and in my current state, I was unable to retain my weapon. He bashed me in the head and face with it, rupturing my lip and adding additional injury to my skull.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges. So we just heard from Hodges and Dunn, Brendan Ballou, the two men that you represent. If you can talk about Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former personal attorney, now the attorney general? When he himself was questioned by Senator Van Hollen and others, refused to say that they would even rule out those insurrectionists who attacked police. Talk about why you believe this fund is illegal. President Trump calls it an “anti-weaponization fund”; others call it a “thug fund.”
BRENDAN BALLOU: Yeah, absolutely. So, let’s start with what purportedly created this fund in the first place, which is the lawsuit that you mentioned by Donald Trump against his own IRS. Now, to have an actual lawsuit in federal court, you need what lawyers call a case or a controversy. The two sides actually need to be opposed to each other. And that just wasn’t the case here. Donald Trump was on one side, and his own IRS, which he controls, was on the other. And that led to a sham settlement over this potential $10 billion lawsuit.
So, this isn’t really even the kind of case that the Department of Justice could settle. But even if it could, the settlement that it purported to reach, this creation of this weaponization, this slush, this thug fund, whatever you want to call it, is not authorized by statute. And what I mean by that is it is functionally the creation of a new department or agency. And, you know, you can’t use the fiction of a settlement to create a new government agency. You know, Republicans would be pretty mad, for instance, if Barack Obama used the fiction of a lawsuit to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance. It’s the same thing here. This is the creation of a new agency that the president functionally controls, that he will get to decide how the money is spent and who the money goes to. Now, all that is what makes—
AMY GOODMAN: And it could go to himself, is that right? I mean, this is a settlement with him.
BRENDAN BALLOU: Oh, absolutely, you know, and they’ve made clear, as part of this broader settlement, you know, he is going to be completely immune from any further IRS investigations. And so it only makes sense that they would potentially try to send money to him or to his family members or to his associates.
But for us, I want to make clear for your audience, you know, it’s not just—you know, this isn’t just a profoundly corrupt slush fund, although it absolutely is that. This is a slush fund that will physically endanger our clients and the people like them, because you were very smart to play those quotes from officers Hodges and Dunn testifying about the dangers that they faced on January 6, but they are continuing to face very real dangers by speaking out about January 6 since then. The risk that we run is that this slush fund is going to be used to pay the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the very people that assaulted these officers and that continue to threaten them, and increase the danger against them because it is going to give a presidential endorsement to these people, saying that not only if they enact violence against the president’s enemies will they be put beyond the reach of the law, but they will actually be financially rewarded for doing so.
AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Ballou, before we end, I was wondering if you can talk about the major thesis of your new book, When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.
BRENDAN BALLOU: You’re kind to ask. So, America has a secret justice system that surrounds us, and yet we know almost nothing about it. It is an alternative to the public court system called forced arbitration. It’s a system where instead of having a judge, you have a private arbitrator, that is typically or often paid for by the very company that you are trying to sue. Proceedings happen in secret and can almost never be appealed. And so, unsurprisingly, these courts almost always rule for the companies rather than for the consumers or the employees.
Now, this all matters because we are increasingly being pushed into this private justice system. And if it feels like companies are increasingly beyond the reach of the law, if you’re getting scammed by companies, overcharged by companies, getting worse customer service, getting discriminated against, hurt or even killed by companies, if that seems to be happening more than it used to, forced arbitration, pushing cases outside of our court system and into this secret justice system that companies largely control, can explain why companies are getting worse in so many ways.
AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Ballou, we want to thank you for being with us, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, representing officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, the police officers suing the Trump administration. Brendan’s new book, When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.
Coming up, The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies. We’ll speak with Northwestern University political scientist Jeffrey Winters. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: “The Money Song” by Dick Walter.
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