MAGA news outlets could be among the claimants seeking to claw back their massive penalties for spreading 2020 election lies through President Donald Trump's massive slush fund, according to new reporting.
CNN's Marshall Cohen reported that One America News, a little-watched right-wing network, is "seriously considering" filing a claim under the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to restore millions of dollars paid to settle defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic, although representatives from Fox News and Newsmax did not say whether they would use the fund.
"I spoke to the lawyer for One America News America News – OAN," Cohen said. "They said they lost a lot of business after 2020, and they are looking to be made whole."
The picture of who these claimants might be is coming into focus, the reporter said.
"For Trump's strongest supporters, this fund is a huge relief," Cohen said. "Now, you just heard the acting attorney general [Todd Blanche] refused to rule out potential payments to violent actors who attacked police on Jan. 6. That should tell you a little bit about how potentially broad this fund might be, and we spent the last couple of days speaking to a lot of people in the Jan. 6 community, and beyond that are hoping to get some money. Jan. 6 rioters, remember there were 1,600 people prosecuted in connection with Jan. 6. They all got pardons, but they want more. They want restitution."
"The former leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, his lawyers told us that he is intending to file a claim," Cohen added. "There's also the 2020 fake electors that tried to subvert the electoral college process. They could get in on the action here. There are also prominent election deniers like Mike Lindell and Tina Peters, who's currently serving the last few weeks of her prison sentence in Colorado for an election systems breach."
Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado, had been sentenced to nine years in prison for allowing unauthorized individuals to access voter data looking for fraud, but Democratic Gov. Jared Polis cut her sentence in half under pressure from Trump and other Republicans.
"For a lot of the people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and participated in the fake electors plot in states across the country, this has been a long time coming," Cohen said. "They said they were debanked, they lost friends, they were ostracized, their businesses took a toll, their retirement funds were drained, paying for legal fees. Let me read for you something from the fake elector from Michigan, Meshawn Maddock. She told me, quote, 'I faced the real possibility of prison time, the trauma to my three kids, and the thought of being separated from my grandchildren. It took a lot out of us.'"
"There were others that we spoke to that were even more defiant," Cohen added. "They said they want payments and they said they want everybody charged in Jan. 6 to get some money, no matter what you did."
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