The Trump v. IRS settlement announced May 18 created a $1.776 billion compensation pool — already dubbed the “1776 Fund” — to provide redress for victims of the political weaponization of our government institutions. Drawn from the U.S. Treasury’s permanent Judgment Fund, the money will compensate Americans who believe they were targeted for political, personal, or ideological reasons. The fund is open to any U.S. person or entity with no partisan test, though President Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization are explicitly barred from payouts. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has described it as a mechanism to hear claims from those subjected to “lawfare and weaponization” by the prior administration.
Even before the ink was dry on the Trump v. IRS settlement, Senate Republicans erupted in protest over the fund. Senators such as Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called it a “payout pot for punks,” and the backlash was so intense that GOP leaders canceled planned votes on border funding and sent members home early for Memorial Day recess. Critics on the left have already labeled the 1776 Fund “a slush fund for January 6 cop-beaters and aggrieved MAGA foot soldiers.”
Those claims are false. The fund has no partisan requirements and is designed primarily for uncharged private citizens and those charged unjustly or never convicted who suffered harm. Violent offenders are not the focus; the settlement language and DOJ statements emphasize relief for the ideological targeting of ordinary Americans.
The Scope and Coordination of Biden-Era Lawfare
The scale of the targeting is now public. The Senate Judiciary Committee has revealed that in then-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” operation 197 secret subpoenas were issued to 34 individuals and 163 businesses seeking records on at least 430 Republican individuals and entities. Targets included election integrity analysts, private citizens, elected officials, and attorneys. Many subpoenas carried nondisclosure and gag orders, so victims often learned years later they had been placed under surveillance.
Disclosure: I was one of those people. Smith filed a secret subpoena for my phone records from October 2020 through January 2021. During that period, I was working with President Trump’s legal team on Trump v. Raffensperger. I was also a defendant in Fair Fight v. True the Vote, a case we ultimately won after three years of Democrat lawfare. I intend to file a claim myself.
The lawfare was not limited to federal actors. The Biden White House and DOJ coordinated directly with state prosecutors. Privilege waivers allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ team to obtain Jan. 6 Committee transcripts. Federal grants flowed to her office while she built her Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act case against Republican activists. Similar assistance reached other state-level efforts, such as those led by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, which also swept in private citizens as witnesses and collateral targets. This federal-state pincer amplified the pressure on private citizens engaged in lawful election-integrity work. The human toll is clearly visible in the “Fulton 19” — the co-defendants in Willis’s RICO case — who endured years of high legal costs, reputational damage, and personal hardship.
A supporting example illustrates the dynamic. In Fair Fight v. True the Vote, the Biden DOJ intervened mid-case to defend the plaintiff’s expansive reading of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act that sought to turn lawful challenges to potentially unqualified voters into “voter intimidation.” The intervention came after defendants raised First Amendment concerns about applying the statute to voter-roll challenges specifically authorized by Georgia law.
The selective enforcement pattern was stark. The 2020 George Floyd riots produced billions of dollars in damage and dozens of deaths, yet federal prosecutions were comparatively limited. January 6, by contrast, triggered more than 1,500 federal charges, including hundreds of misdemeanors against non-violent participants who entered restricted grounds without weapons or property damage.
It’s Different When Democrats Do It
Democrats have long rewarded their own after controversy. James Comey, fired as FBI director, received a reported $2 million book advance for A Higher Loyalty, plus six-figure speaking fees, a Washington Post contract, and a CBS miniseries. Peter Strzok, fired over anti-Trump texts, secured a $1.2 million DOJ settlement and a teaching position at Georgetown. Mark Milley, criticized for public comments on Trump, moved into a senior JPMorgan advisory role and faculty positions at Princeton and Georgetown. Eric Ciaramella, widely reported to be the Ukraine whistleblower, landed a senior fellowship at the Carnegie Endowment and a contributing editor role at the influential national-security blog Lawfare. These sinecures and windfalls flowed to high-profile politically aligned insiders.
‘The Process Is the Punishment‘
The very real and human cost of government-sponsored lawfare is why large awards are necessary. As Mollie Hemingway documented in her 2017 Federalist analysis of Comey’s obstruction cases, the process itself becomes the punishment. Even when targets aren’t charged or are fully exonerated, the damage can be severe: legal fees that routinely ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars, lost income from job loss, forced retirement or blacklisting, reputational harm, and financial, medical, or marital damage triggered by prolonged stress and legal expenses.
The roughly 430 Republican individuals and entities targeted in the Arctic Frost operation were placed under secret subpoenas and gag orders without their knowledge, often only learning years later that they had been swept up in the dragnet. Parallel civil litigation often amplified the toll. Defendants in cases like Fair Fight v. True the Vote and parallel voter-challenge lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan faced massive defense costs and uncertainty while the Biden DOJ actively supported the opposing side. Those harms — financial, professional, and physical — cannot be dismissed as collateral damage. They are the predictable result of weaponizing government levers of power against lawful activity.
Beyond Restitution — Prevention is Needed
Restitution through the 1776 Fund is just, but also not enough. Structural reforms are essential to deter the weaponization of our government institutions in the future.
Congress should impose caps or approval requirements on large Judgment Fund payouts. Guardrails removed under the Biden administration — such as those once enforced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark — must be reinstated for politically sensitive settlements. Federal-state coordination against political opponents should require tighter limits on privilege waivers, transcript sharing, and grants to state prosecutors. Subpoena and gag-order rules for private citizens should require prompt notification when investigations close without charges.
Democrats established and defended the rules that allowed expansive use of the Judgment Fund. Republicans are now using those same rules to compensate victims of the weaponization those rules enabled.
Restitution today is necessary. Prevention tomorrow is imperative. Government power must never again be turned on lawful private citizens doing the work of democracy — challenging voter rolls, researching election integrity, or petitioning officials for redress of grievances. Only then will the machinery of justice serve all Americans equally.
Mark Davis is President of Data Productions, Inc., has been working with voter data since 1986, and is a member of the Georgia Republican Party’s Election Confidence Task Force. He has served as an analyst and expert witness in court cases involving disputed elections seven times over the last 23 years, and has been invited to offer testimony before subcommittees of the Georgia General Assembly three times since 2020. Follow him @MarkDavisGOP on X.
