“I love it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he refused to declare the fund dead. “I’d have to ask the lawyers. I don’t know.”
While pressure from many of the GOP’s rank-and-file seemed to derail the special fund, a couple of Republicans who played prominent roles in the bipartisan Jan. 6 probe continue to support the White House effort.
“Being a victim of false accusations by the government, I mean, it's had a profound effect on me,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) — who the Select Jan. 6 Committee released video of giving a tour of the Capitol on the eve of the attack — told Raw Story. “But imagine what it's had on others.”
“Huge effect on me and my family”
Since Republicans reclaimed control of the House, Loudermilk issued an interim report on Jan. 6, 2021, on security failures in 2024. Then, in 2025, Republicans named him chair of a GOP select committee.
While Loudermilk says he opposes federal government payouts to anyone who attacked law enforcement, he’s open to payouts to others prosecuted for taking part in the riot.
“Do you think any members of Congress — not yourself, necessarily, but others who were wrapped up in that — may deserve it?” Raw Story asked. “Would that be something acceptable?”
“That's something that I think we're going to have to address going forward,” Loudermilk said. “Like, when I was falsely accused, it was a huge effect on me and my family. We had to have 24-hour security…most of the time we just had to go away from home.”
Even as Acting Attorney General Blanche testified this week that the special fund is now in the administration’s rearview mirror — “we’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” he told Congress this week — Loudermilk doesn’t want it to be.
“I looked into, ‘do I have a defamation suit?’ I talked to an attorney who said, ‘No, because of your position, you do not because you're a public official,’” Loudermilk said. “The bar is way too high.”
Last year, Senate Republicans approved a measure allowing GOP senators whose phone records or data were swept up in the Justice Department’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation to sue the federal government for up to $500,000.
House Republicans later voted unanimously to kill the provision, but some Senate Republicans still support it, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), whose office was accused of helping facilitate the 2020 fake election scheme from the Wisconsin GOP.
“I disavowed ever pursuing that for myself,” Johnson, who’s worth tens of millions of dollars, told Raw Story. “I didn't have a problem with being able to sue to obtain disclosure and discovery, but I won’t avail myself of any damages on that stuff.”
Johnson says he hasn’t looked into the specifics of Trump’s “weaponization” fund, but, current politics aside, he’s on board with the effort.
“I'm totally supportive. It’s been around since 1957,” Johnson said of the Judgment Fund Congress approved in 1956. “If the government abuses its citizens, those citizens ought to have a cause of action to be able to get compensated from that Judgment Fund.”
Last month, Johnson’s constituent James Troupis filed a $3.2 million claim against the federal government even after he was indicted on a felony conspiracy charge for his role in Wisconsin’s 2020 fake elector scheme.
“I do hope that the Judgment Funds will be available to people like Judge Troupis in Wisconsin, who has just been destroyed — this is a really good man, a person of utmost integrity — who has a couple million dollars in legal fees because of the weaponization of the Biden administration,” Johnson said.
“I oppose that”
Johnson says he’s got a red line, though.
“What do you make of the provision that Trump and his family can't be sued again or indicted again on tax stuff?” Raw Story pressed on other provisions of DOJ’s deal with Trump.
“When you settle with the IRS, you generally settle past claims. That's perfectly appropriate,” Johnson said. “But do you do something in the future? That's what Biden did with his son. I oppose that.
“I oppose some future, you know, immunity as just being wrong. You just don't do that stuff. I mean, it's just, it's a moral hazard that you just incentivize people to do wrong.”
