Trump doesn’t rule out giving Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police ‘anti-weaponization’ fund payouts

President Donald Trump did not rule out the government paying people who were charged with assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he also contended without evidence that recent California elections were “rigged,” in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Subscribe to read this story ad-free

Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.

Trump defended what his administration has dubbed an “anti-weaponization” fund, saying the protesters who breached the Capitol as Congress prepared to certify Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, 2021, were unfairly targeted by prosecutors and deserved compensation.

When “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker asked if those who attacked police officers that day should get a payout with taxpayer funds, Trump said: “I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it.”

Trump then called the 2020 presidential election “dirty” and segued to last Tuesday’s elections in California, where votes were still being tallied into the weekend. He cast doubt on the state’s election results as a federal prosecutor announced Friday on social media that “multiple election fraud investigations” were underway in California.

“Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?” Trump said.

Under California’s vote-by-mail system, it often takes several days for a winner to be announced in competitive races. Ballots postmarked on or before election day and received within seven days after the election are eligible to be counted, according to state laws.

When Trump said that “they’re cheating on the election,” Welker asked if he had evidence supporting that claim.

“All I have to do is look,” the president said.

NBC News projected that Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the general election race for governor, but his opponent was still unclear as of Saturday. Becerra will likely face either billionaire fellow Democrat Tom Steyer or Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host whom Trump has endorsed.

The interview was set in a barn with a metal roof and took place before Trump appeared at a roundtable discussion devoted to the farming industry. A rainstorm pelted the roof, delaying the interview repeatedly, and a technical issue caused another interruption. Trump ended the interview about 50 minutes after sitting down, after becoming visibly frustrated during a back-and-forth over election interference and his criticism of the press.

Trump’s remarks about the nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund come at a time when its fate is uncertain. On May 29, a federal judge temporarily barred the Trump administration from standing up the fund pending a lawsuit that aims to block it.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers on June 2 that the administration was “not moving forward with the fund, period.”

That seemed definitive, though the following day, when reporters asked about the status of the fund, Trump said, “I’ll have to ask the lawyers. I don’t know.”

More from NBC News’ interview with Trump

In the “Meet the Press” interview, Trump gave a more full-throated defense of the fund, which grew out of a settlement he reached after suing the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns.

“Well, look. If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve,” he said. “People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them.”

“I love the idea,” he said of the fund, maintaining that politicized prosecutions upended the lives of people who stood to get paid.

“So let — let me explain what the fund is,” Trump said. “People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe. They’re vicious. They’re violent, what they did to people. And, of course, they went after me more than anybody else. They raided Mar-a-Lago and all the other things.”

“But people have been badly hurt,” he continued. “They’ve committed suicide. They’ve lost their jobs. They’ve lost their families. They’ve lost their wives. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization of government.”

A total of 1,600 people were charged in connection with the Capitol attack, and 1,100 had been sentenced as the Biden administration wound down. As the transfer of power unfolded in the Capitol on Jan. 6, some protesters stormed the building armed with stun guns, bear spray, flagpoles and other implements capable of inflicting harm.

More than 140 police officers were injured in the melee. In a news conference, Matthew Graves, who was U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia during the Biden administration, said that Jan. 6 constituted “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”

Trump had promised clemency for many protesters during the campaign. On the first day of his new term, he followed through and pardoned about 1,500 people involved in the riot, including some who’d attacked police.

In the “Meet the Press” interview, Trump said that those who admitted guilt did so because they’d been threatened with long sentences.

“They pled guilty because they were frightened,” he said. “They went down. They were ushered into a building. Many of them were arrested without even going into the building,” he said.

He said that FBI agents had been “ushering them into the building.”

“They had FBI: ‘Go into the building,’” Trump said. “Those people are walking around, they’re looking, ‘Oh, isn’t this nice?’”

When Welker said there was no evidence of that, Trump said, “You had a bunch of dirty cops and frankly, what they did was weaponization of our government.”

“Try looking at the tapes one time,” he said. “Look at the tapes one time.”

He did not specify which tapes he had in mind.

Video taken at the Capitol that day shows instances of rioters beating police officers and forcing their way into the Capitol through broken windows.

One viral video showed Washington, D.C., officer Daniel Hodges being pinned in a doorway by a pro-Trump mob.

Those running the fund would weigh the merits of individual cases, Trump said.

“The people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated,” he said.