Two police officers in Washington, DC, have sued the administration of President Donald Trump over its decision to establish a $1.776bn fund to compensate victims of alleged government “weaponisation”, reports Al Jazeera.
In their lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges call the fund “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century”.
They are aiming to have the fund dissolved in order to prevent taxpayer money from being disbursed to participants in the attack against the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
On that day, thousands of Trump supporters descended on Congress in an apparent effort to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
“If allowed to begin making payments, the Fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters who threatened Plaintiffs’ lives that day, and continue to do so,” the lawsuit argues.
Both Dunn and Hodges have said they were injured during the attack. Dunn, a member of the US Capitol Police, has since retired.
Hodges, who remains with the Metropolitan Police Department, recalled in the lawsuit being “nearly crushed by rioters” against a Capitol door. Another officer heard protesters threaten to “kill him with his own gun”. The officers feared they would not escape the attack alive.
Their lawsuit argues that Trump has signalled he would like to compensate the January 6 rioters, saying they were “treated unfairly” by the justice system.
The newly created fund, it argues, would allow him to do so with little oversight.
Already, on the first day of his second term, Trump issued a blanket pardon to nearly all the participants in the attack, and he commuted the sentences of 14 others.
According to their complaint, both Dunn and Hodges continue to be the subject of violent threats and harassment as a result of their defence of the Capitol. Compensating their attackers, the two men claim, will encourage further violence.
“The Fund’s mere existence sends a clear and chilling message: those who enact violence in President Trump’s name will not just avoid punishment, they will be rewarded with riches,” the lawsuit says.
“That message, by itself, substantially increases the already sizeable risk of vigilante violence Dunn and Hodges face on a near-daily basis. And it encourages those who are harassing Dunn and Hodges, and sending them death threats, to up the ante.”
Bd-pratidin English/TR
