Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who was sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over January 6, is putting his hand out for a piece of Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization” fund. Tarrio told Reuters he plans to apply and estimates he is owed between $2 million and $5 million. “I’m not greedy,” he said. “But my life was all [expletive] up because of this.”
This is the same Enrique Tarrio who pleaded guilty in 2021 to destruction of property for stealing a Black Lives Matter banner from Asbury United Methodist Church, a historic Black church in Washington, D.C., dousing it in lighter fluid, and setting it on fire. He admitted it on social media. He posed for a picture. The judge said Tarrio “clearly, intentionally, and proudly crossed the line from peaceful protest and assembly to dangerous and potentially violent conduct.”
Now he wants taxpayers to write him a check.
Tarrio was pardoned by Trump in January 2025 alongside more than 1,500 January 6 defendants. He served 34 months of a 22 year sentence, the longest handed down to any Capitol attack defendant. His attorney Peter Ticktin, who represents more than 400 January 6 defendants, says the fund may not even be big enough. “People lost multi-million dollar businesses while they were locked up,” Ticktin said.
Mike Lindell is in line too. The MyPillow CEO and 2020 election denier told CNN he believes his company lost $400 million to government weaponization and called the fund Trump’s way of “looking out for these people that were attacked.” Lindell has already been ordered to pay $2.3 million in defamation damages to a former Dominion Voting Systems executive, with Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits still pending.
The fund was created Monday when Trump’s Department of Justice settled Trump’s own $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, will handpick four of the five commission members who decide who gets paid. The decisions cannot be appealed. The settlement does not require public disclosure of payouts. Claims will be processed through December 2028, one month before Trump’s term ends.
Asked at a Senate hearing whether Proud Boys or Oath Keepers convicted of attacking Capitol Police officers could collect, Blanche said, “Anybody in this country can apply.” Vice President JD Vance refused to rule it out.
Two officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, have already sued to dissolve the fund, citing the 14th Amendment’s bar on the United States paying “any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection.”
Trump told reporters the $1.776 billion may not even be enough. “You’re talking about peanuts,” he said.
