There is a strange weight to watching two police officers walk into a federal courthouse to sue a sitting president. Not strange in the legal sense, exactly. Lawsuits against presidents are common enough by now that most Americans barely flinch. What feels different this time is who is doing the suing and what they are suing over. Harry Dunn, retired from the Capitol Police, and Daniel Hodges, still on duty with the Metropolitan Police Department, both stood on the west front of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Hodges, as anyone who watched the footage will remember, was the officer crushed between metal doors, his face contorted, a rioter clawing at his eyes. Five years later, he is back in the news, this time arguing that the government he serves is about to pay the people who tried to kill him.
The fund at the center of all this is called the Anti-Weaponization Fund, which is the kind of name that almost dares you to take it seriously. It carries a price tag of $1.776 billion, a number chosen, one assumes, for reasons that have nothing to do with arithmetic. It was created through a settlement in which President Trump dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over a leak of his tax records by a former employee.
In exchange, the Department of Justice agreed to set aside money for people who claim they were victims of prosecutorial overreach. Who qualifies, and who decides, is largely unanswered. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, when pressed in a Senate hearing, declined to rule out payouts to January 6 rioters. Vice President JD Vance, asked the same question, offered the rhetorical shrug of saying anyone is welcome to apply, including Hunter Biden.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, calls the fund “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.” That is a sweeping phrase, and probably designed to be quoted, but the underlying argument is narrower and more interesting. According to Dunn and Hodges, the settlement is a fraud, the fund is not authorized by law, and its very existence encourages political violence. Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, their attorney, has framed the issue as whether the executive branch can successfully manufacture appropriations out of a private legal grievance. That question appears to be genuinely challenging for constitutional scholars, which is one of the reasons this case is worth following.
Its structure has an almost cinematic quality. Men who fought for the legislative building are the plaintiffs. The president, his former defense lawyer, and the Treasury Secretary are among the defendants. Of all things, a tax leak was the source of the contested funds. Furthermore, the fundamental concern expressed in the complaint is that the fund’s existence will incite further acts of violence in Trump’s name. Dunn, who has publicly discussed his PTSD and lost a 2024 Maryland congressional bid, claims he already gets legitimate death threats. Presumably, Hodges, still in uniform, also receives them.
It is another matter entirely if the lawsuit is successful. The standing issue alone has the potential to derail proceedings before any constitutional question is resolved, and federal courts have become increasingly unpredictable when it comes to matters involving presidential authority. Nonetheless, legal observers believe that this case goes beyond merely requesting an injunction. It is compelling a public debate about whether the government’s machinery can be used to reward political allegiance in an open and blatant manner. As it develops, it is difficult to ignore how few people in Washington appear shocked these days. Of all the details, that one might be the most concerning.
