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justice department
My Application for $30 Million From Trump’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund
A formal letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, faithfully submitted.
May 30, 2026
Dear Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche,
I am writing to formally submit my application to your newly established federal “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for compensation in the form of a cash payment for damages incurred at the hands of the United States government.
As you stated while announcing President Trump’s new $1.776 billion fund, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”
Todd, if I may, I saw your former client — President Trump, for whom you previously provided legal representation — backed you up, saying, “This is reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”
Additionally, Todd, I read an Associated Press report noting that during congressional testimony you stated that you “wouldn’t rule out the possibility that rioters who assaulted police on Jan. 6 would be eligible for fund payouts.” After hearing your remarkably broad interpretation of governmental victimization, I felt compelled to share with you what the government has done to me and my family by writing the letter below — which reveals several forms of government abuse my family and I have endured which, while you may not find as severe as the temporary loss of access to the U.S. Capitol experienced by individuals convicted of felonies related to January 6, nonetheless caused considerable hardship for us.
I was initially reassured that my request was reasonable after learning that Adam Johnson — best known for carrying Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol during the January 6 attack — is reportedly considering a claim of up to $5 million himself.
However, after learning that Brandon Fellows — another January 6 defendant pardoned by President Trump — reportedly plans to seek $30 million from the fund, including $21.5 million for what he described as “wrongful imprisonment,” I realized that the harms experienced by my family and me may in fact fall closer to Mr. Fellows’s compensation range.
So, after reviewing your department’s stated principles, apparent standards, and anticipated applicant pool, I believe I am highly qualified for compensation and would like to make a modest request of $30 million.
In fact, Todd, I believe I possess two major qualifications that should place me among the strongest candidates for compensation, which I will detail below.
Claim One: Descendant of Enslaved People
First, since this appears to function as a reparations program for people harmed by state injustice, I should begin by saying that I come from a family with a long legacy of being brutalized by the United States. And if you think the January 6 defendants have a compelling claim for compensation due to governmental mistreatment, wait until you hear about this historical episode called slavery.
My great-great-grandparents, Laura and Thomas Lenoir, were enslaved in Marion County, Mississippi, and spent their lives laboring without compensation in a nation loudly proclaiming “liberty” while designating Black people as property. After decades spent tracing our family history, my father recently discovered the very plantation where they were enslaved— a breakthrough that finally allowed our family to identify the precise location where generations of uncompensated labor helped build this country’s wealth.
My ancestors worked this land they did not own, built wealth they could not keep, and endured violence they could not legally resist. No compensation was ever provided for the stolen labor, stolen children, stolen wages, stolen land, stolen futures, or the generations of poverty and discrimination that followed emancipation. Stories of Laura’s beatings and brutal treatment have been passed down through my family for generations.
In explaining why she believed January 6 defendants deserved compensation, Rachel Powell — who prosecutors identified as one of the first rioters to breach Capitol grounds and who was filmed using a battering ram to smash a Capitol window — recently stated: “We endured a lot. Our lives are still not the same. I don’t know what kind of price you can put on that.”
Todd, I must admit I found Ms. Powell’s reflections unexpectedly relatable. Indeed, many descendants of slavery have similarly struggled to determine what monetary figure might adequately compensate for generations of forced labor and legally sanctioned terror.
For many years, I was informed that reparations for descendants of slavery were unrealistic, unaffordable, divisive, or simply impossible. Republican and Democratic leaders alike repeatedly explained that while slavery was unfortunate, there was no practical mechanism for compensating descendants in the present day. However, your department’s new fund has helped me understand that no sum of money is too large for the government to produce once it decides that a great injustice has been perpetrated.
And then there is the symbolism of the fund’s exact amount — $1.776 billion — which is especially moving. President Trump, with his trademark subtlety and keen sense of gravitas, must have chosen this specific figure for providing reparations to people claiming mistreatment by the government as a fitting tribute to a nation founded by those who declared liberty for all in 1776 while simultaneously enslaving and brutalizing Black people.
Claim Two: My Arrest at a Capitol Building During Political Protest
My second major qualification is that, like many of the fund’s anticipated beneficiaries who stormed the capitol building on January 6, I was also arrested at a capitol building during a political protest.
In 2012, Washington state announced a special legislative session to determine how to slash education and healthcare budgets by some $2 Billion during the aftermath of the Great Recession. At the time, I was helping organize with the Social Equity Educators (SEE), a group of educators fighting against austerity and for educational justice.
We joined a much larger mass protest at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia to oppose billions of dollars in cuts to public services. Just before lawmakers gaveled in the special budget cutting session inside the House Ways and Means Committee meeting room, several of us managed to enter the chamber before they locked the door to the many protestors surrounding the building. The moment the session began, we mic-checked the room and read aloud the Washington State Constitution language that explicitly specifies funding education is the “paramount duty” of the state, and we declared therefore the state not only had a moral obligation but also a legal obligation to fully fund public education.
After finishing the statement, I produced a pair of plastic handcuffs I got at the dollar store and invited the legislators into my custody for what I announced was citizen’s arrest.
As I approached the legislators’ benches carrying self-made citizen’s arrest warrants to issue to each member, a police officer apparently arrived at a somewhat different interpretation of the law than I had. In an astonishing twist, he arrested me instead of the legislators.
He grabbed my arm, forced it behind my back, and cinched the handcuffs tightly around my wrists. Officers then moved me into a back room while they attempted to figure out how to remove me from the building as hundreds of protesters outside chanted, “Let the teacher go!”
Eventually, police whisked me out and pushed me into the back of a squad car and repeatedly questioned me about my actions even after I informed them that I wished to speak only in the presence of legal counsel. I was transported to a nearby jail, had my mugshot taken, ordered to exchange my clothes for a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, and placed in a jail cell with several other people for the evening.
While I was in jail, unbeknownst to me, my students at Garfield High School created a Facebook page titled “Free Mr. Hagopian.” When I returned to school the next day, students had changed the page into “Seattle Student Walkout for Education.”
Within twenty-four hours of my arrest, more than 500 Garfield students organized a mass walkout protesting the education cuts, carrying signs reading “Fund Our Future” and chanting, “We’re the future of our nation, no more cuts to education!” Students later formed a coalition called Students of Washington for Change to pressure the legislature through protests and letter-writing campaigns.
Importantly, Todd, not long afterward the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the legislature actually was violating the constitution in what became known as the McCleary decision, so I trust that my legal vindication strengthens my application considerably. And if generations of slavery fall short in qualifying me for compensation, I trust my arrest at a capitol while protesting government lawbreaking will place me in strong standing under your department’s standards.
A Possible Weakness in My Application
Now Todd, in the interest of full transparency, I should acknowledge one possible weakness in my case. The Department of Justice fact sheet explaining your fund notes that “Claims are awarded on a case-by-case basis, and the Commissioners must consider a claimant’s personal conduct and character when making a determination.”
I must admit, Todd, this language gave me some pause.
While I was arrested at a capitol building during a large political protest — something I understand may weigh heavily in my favor given your department’s apparent sympathy for January 6 defendants — I did not use a battering ram to breach the Capitol building, assault police officers, carry Confederate flags through the halls of government, or attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election.
In retrospect, I recognize this may complicate my claim.
Still, I would respectfully submit that my application remains highly competitive. Unlike many January 6 defendants, when I protested at a capitol, the court later ruled that the government I was protesting had actually broken the law.
Instructions for Disbursement of Funds
Todd, thank you for taking the time to read and consider my formal application for compensation from the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
Once my claim has been approved, you may issue a direct payment in the form of a contribution to Where I Got My Name: Down in Mississippi — a documentary film project about my father discovering the plantation where our family had been enslaved and our journey to Mississippi to recover our family’s history — or to Rethinking Schools and the Zinn Education Project, organizations that have spent decades supporting honest education about the history of this country and the people who were truly “horribly treated” by their government (as President Trump put it).
Todd, I appreciate your department’s newfound commitment to reparative justice, and I look forward to receiving confirmation of my $30 million award soon.
Sincerely,
Jesse Hagopian
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The Tragic Transformation of Todd Blanche
Someday Blanche’s progeny may ask him why—as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States—he helped a rogue president run roughshod over the rule of law.
May 03, 2026
During President Donald Trump’s first term, he bemoaned the failure of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to protect him from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s efforts to elect Trump in 2016.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump erupted, referring to his notorious former fixer who had also been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man during the 1950s Senate hearings into communist activity. Trump later fired Sessions.
For a time, Attorney General William Barr was the answer. But the two men parted ways after Barr told him repeatedly that no evidence supported Trump’s obsessive claims that voter fraud had cost him the 2020 election.
In Trump’s second term, it appeared that Pam Bondi fit the bill. She tried valiantly to meet Trump’s every legal need. She transformed the Justice Department into Trump’s personal tool, prosecuted Trump’s perceived enemies, and tried to protect Trump from the fallout over the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of minors.
Bondi's Deputy, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now auditioning to remove the “Acting” from his title. He hopes to succeed where his predecessors have failed—to become Trump’s enduring Roy Cohn.
But she bungled the Epstein files. She tried but failed to prosecute two key targets on Trump’s vengeance list: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. She savaged her own reputation but could not save her job.
Bondi’s deputy, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now auditioning to remove the “Acting” from his title. He hopes to succeed where his predecessors have failed—to become Trump’s enduring Roy Cohn.
From Democrat to Trump Enabler
Blanche began his legal career in 1999 as a paralegal in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Working days and attending Brooklyn Law School at night, he graduated in 2003. After a stint as an associate in the Davis Polk firm and two federal court clerkships, he returned in 2006 to the US Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor and eventually became co-chief of the violent crimes division.
In 2014, Blanche joined the WilmerHale firm as a partner before moving to another big New York firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft. In 2019, he represented Paul Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges similar to federal crimes for which Manafort had already been convicted in 2018. (Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020). Blanche got the state law claims dismissed on double jeopardy grounds.
But in April 2023, Cadwalader balked when Blanche, then a registered Democrat, sought to represent Trump in the hush-money case involving payments to Stormy Daniels. So Blanche left Cadwalader and started his own firm. The jury eventually convicted Trump, but for Blanche it began a profitable relationship that generated over $3 million from Trump’s Save America PAC in the new firm’s first year alone.
Blanche went on to represent Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case and in the election obstruction case involving Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. In 2024, Blanche switched his registration from Democrat to Republican.
Trump’s Latest Roy Cohn
Blanche is no longer Trump’s personal attorney, but you wouldn’t know it from his conduct in office.
Although he was the No. 2 official in the Justice Department, in July 2025 he tried to quiet the MAGA backlash over Trump’s breach of an election pledge to release the Justice Department’s Epstein files. Blanche went to Florida where Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell was in prison and interviewed her personally. Openly seeking a pardon, Maxwell said that she had never seen Trump do anything inappropriate.
Mission accomplished.
Shortly thereafter, Maxwell was transferred to a “club fed-type” prison camp—even though her conviction had rendered her ineligible for such placement under Bureau of Prisons policy. Blanche said that threats against her were the reason for the transfer.
As acting attorney general, Blanche has now picked up where Bondi had failed to put Comey behind bars. At an April 28, 2026 press conference, he announced Comey’s indictment alleging that in posting an Instagram photo of sea shells that formed “86 47” on a North Carolina beach, Comey “knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.”
A sea-shell death threat via Instagram.
“So, I think it's fair to say that threatening the life of anybody is dangerous and potentially a crime,” Blanche said indignantly as he explained that the charges against Comey came with a 10-year potential prison sentence. “Threatening the life of the President of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice.”
Blanche continued, “[W]hile this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute.”
Really? How about these?
“Hang Mike Pence”—Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, some of whom may have been responsible for the sign carrying that message and the gallows accompanying it. The statute of limitations on such “threats” is five years. Where was that indictment?
“86 46”—Anti-Biden Trump social media personality Jack Posobiec posted this in January 2022. It also appeared on T-Shirts, caps, and Republican fundraising messages.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) posted this in February 2024: “We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell. Better days are ahead for the Republican Party.”
Wasting Taxpayer Money
Prosecutors face a daunting task proving Comey’s subjective intent to harm Trump. Even longtime Trump apologist Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, acknowledged that the indictment “is unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny. If it did, it would allow the government to criminalize a huge swath of political speech in the United States.”
When asked at his press conference how he would prove intent, Blanche said “with witnesses, with documents, and with the defendant himself,” adding: “It's very premature for me to do that today.”
That non-answer won’t suffice when Comey’s lawyers provide evidence that this is just another vindictive prosecution on Trump’s behalf at taxpayer expense.
Someday Blanche’s progeny may ask him why—as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States—he helped a rogue president run roughshod over the rule of law.
He probably won’t tell them about Roy Cohn.
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Pam Bondi's Blind Obedience
As Trump's attorney general, Bondi has undermined her integrity, defined her legacy, and destroyed the nation’s Justice Department.
Feb 26, 2026
Incompetence will be President Donald Trump’s undoing. The only question is whether he and his minions will undo the nation first. Today’s subject is Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi’s Blunders and Bluster
In her first year, Bondi has established an unprecedented record of destruction in the service of Trump. Servitude is more apt. Here’s a small sample:
- Thousands of experienced attorneys have left the Justice Department. Bondi fired those she deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. Others resigned in protest over her directives, such as investigating the partner of Renee Nicole Good—a US citizen whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota killed—rather than scrutinizing the actions of her ICE killers.
- Bondi has decimated the department’s civil rights division, which historically investigated whether federal officers had used excessive force in killings like Good’s. As division head Harmeet Dhillon turned its mission upside down, more than 70% of its attorneys left. University of Chicago Law School Professor Craig Futterman explained that the Trump administration “is using a division that has a history of protecting the most vulnerable among us to wage an all-out assault on the civil rights of vulnerable people, including Black people, brown people, women, LGBTQIA folk.”
- Across the country, judges are chastising federal prosecutors for defying court orders and are wondering if the problem is incompetence, work overload, or the executive branch’s systematic attack on the judiciary. At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases: “Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening,” Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in West Virginia wrote, calling the warrantless arrest and imprisonment of thousands across the country “an assault on the constitutional order.”
- On Capitol Hill, Bondi refused to answer pointed questions and, instead, descended into bipartisan insults of the elected representatives who dared to challenge her. When ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional law professor, told her not to filibuster through his limited time for questioning, she snapped, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed up loser lawyer.” She called Republican Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) a “failed politician” who had “Trump derangement syndrome.”
- Bipartisan outrage grows over Bondi’s incompetent and incomplete production of the Justice Department’s infamous Jeffrey Epstein files. It took Rep. Massie and a handful of fellow Republicans in the House to overcome the opposition of Trump and his congressional allies in forcing legislation requiring full disclosure by December 19, 2025. That deadline came and went before Bondi’s department finally produced files that included victims’ identities. The public learned on February 24 that the Justice Department’s belated 3.5 million-page document dump excluded files relating to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor, according to an NPR analysis and the New York Times.
Bondi’s Backstory
Understanding Bondi’s loyalty to Trump over her oath to uphold the Constitution requires a timeline:
- In November 2010, Bondi was elected Florida’s attorney general. From February 2008 to May 2011, her Office of Attorney General (OAG) received at least 22 complaints regarding Trump University, the Trump Institute, and related entities.
- In August 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump, Trump Entrepreneur Institute aka Trump University, and the former president of Trump University for “engaging in persistent fraudulent, illegal, and deceptive conduct.” The Florida OAG said it was looking at the allegations.
- In September 2013, the Donald J. Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to “And Justice for All,” a political group backing Bondi’s reelection. The donation, illegal for a 501(c)(3) private foundation, was personally solicited by Bondi from Trump.
- In October 2013, the OAG said it would not act on the complaints against Trump University or join the lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general.
- In March 2016, Bondi became the first big-name Republican in the state to endorse Trump in the Florida presidential primary. A week later, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) filed a complaint against the Trump Foundation. Trump representatives admitted to the earlier illegal donation, blaming a series of clerical errors.
- In June 2016, Bondi’s spokesperson told the Associated Press that the attorney general was unaware of the 20+ complaints against Trump entities when she solicited the donation in 2013.
- In September 2016, the Washington Post discovered that Trump had paid a $2,500 IRS penalty for the illegal donation to Bondi.
- In December 2016, Trump announced that he was shutting down his foundation in response to the growing scandal, which now included claims of self-dealing.
- In March 2017, an attorney hired by the Florida Commission on Ethics found: “[I]t may raise suspicions that within a month after the New York Attorney General announced that New York would be filing a lawsuit against Trump University, Donald Trump contributed a total of $25,500.00 to [Bondi] or her organizations. However, in this case, there is no evidence that [she] was involved with the investigation or decisions regarding Trump University.”
- During Trump’s first impeachment trial in January 2020, Bondi was one of his defense lawyers.
Bondi’s Blind Obedience
Announcing Bondi as his choice for US attorney general to replace failed nominee Matt Gaetz, Trump said, “For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans—Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime and Making America Safe Again.”
To Bondi, that mission means slavish devotion to Trump and weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, NY Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, six Democratic lawmakers who recorded a message to troops about not following illegal orders, and on and on and on. In some cases, the only check on her abuse of power has been the refusal of grand juries—consisting of ordinary citizens—to issue indictments that she had sought against Trump’s targets.
Bondi has undermined her integrity, defined her legacy, and destroyed the nation’s Justice Department. As with many members of Trump’s cabinet, her incompetence is catching up with her, but it’s taking a toll on all of us.
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