A conservative commentator drew baffled stares from his fellow panelists on CNN after making a flagrantly false claim to justify possible government compensation for Jan. 6 rioters.
The Department of Justice established a $1.776 billion fund to repay individuals who claim to have been politically targeted by previous administrations, and anti-trans activist Terry Schilling told "CNN This Morning" that Trump allies had every right to payouts for prosecutions that resulted in convictions and guilty pleas.
"I don't actually know what the real facts are here, but the government was weaponized against very innocent people," Schilling said. "Michael Caputo had to move his family from New York to Florida. He has little girls. You had Mike Flynn had to sell his home and mortgage."
Host Audie Cornish asked whether James Comey deserved compensation for his targeting by the Trump administration, which Schilling deflected, and Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright denounced the fund as corrupt.
"Not only is this corrupt, it's unconstitutional because Congress controls the purse," Seawright said. "So this MAGA slush fund was set to take taxpayers dollars and give to white nationalists and white supremacists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. That's number one. Number two, the fact that you have a president who's willing to exempt his family for the rest of their lives from being audited for tax purposes, when this is the same man who tried to act as if people were behaving as if they were above the law. That's corrupt and it's wrong, and you would not be sitting here nodding yes to this if this was Joe Biden, Barack Obama or President Kamala Harris."
Schilling fired back with a blatant falsehood.
"So what I want to say is that this government held thousands of people without charges in prison for years," Schilling claimed. "That needs to be recompensed. These people were these there were thousands of Jan. 6 that were held without charges, without the ability to even contest it. You're looking at me like I'm crazy."
Schilling had noticed the other panelists looking confused, and for good reason – none of the Jan. 6 defendants were held without charges, but many of them were formally charged with specific federal crimes and then held without bond while awaiting trial.
"That is not something I've heard," Cornish replied. "I know there were people who went to jail because they were convicted."
"There were thousands of people that were put in jail without charges and were held there," Schilling insisted, "and those people need to be recompensed."
Cornish stepped in to fact check his doubled-down claim.
"Those people, you know, because I'm thinking about what you're saying, were in pretrial detention," she said. "They were going through the legal process, which, by the way, is not what this weaponization fund does."
