Republican strategist Michael Caputo on Tuesday became the first known person to make a claim to the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization” fund.
Caputo worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2024 campaigns and served in the Department of Health and Human Services during the president’s first term, before becoming entangled in the lengthy federal investigation into whether Trump’s team colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s former senior adviser maintained his innocence during then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and moved this week to take advantage of the new $1.8 billion DOJ fund, which acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said seeks to compensate individuals who the Justice Department has wrongly targeted. Caputo is seeking $2.7 million in restitution and reimbursement after saying he was wrongly targeted during Mueller’s controversial “Crossfire” investigation.
“Some Russiagate remnants have been concerned about the President’s commitment to accountability and restitution,” Caputo told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “As a weaponization policy advisor in his 2024 campaign, I’ve never stopped believing, and our family is really pleased to see this execution under the leadership of Acting Attorney General Blanche.”
The $1.8 billion DOJ fund was created as part of a settlement agreement Trump reached with the IRS to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit against the agency.
In exchange for Trump agreeing to drop the lawsuit, the IRS agreed to create the anti-weaponization fund. A five-person committee, largely appointed by Blanche, is in charge of deciding which complainants receive funds from the anti-weaponization fund. The $1.776 billion in the fund will come from “the judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation allowing DOJ to settle and pay cases,” according to prosecutors. The judgment fund, created by Congress in 1956, is a permanent, uncapped appropriation that the government uses to pay people when it loses or settles a lawsuit.
“This is reimbursing people that were horribly treated — horribly treated,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “They’ve been weaponized. They’ve been, in some cases, imprisoned wrongly. They paid legal fees that they didn’t have. They’ve gone bankrupt. Their lives have been destroyed. And they turned out to be right. It was a terrible period of time in the history of our country.”
Caputo previously told the Washington Examiner that during the Russia investigation, he had to liquidate his children’s college fund to cover the costs of legal representation, and also developed head and neck cancer while under scrutiny from investigators. He said the investigations “forced” his family out of their home and raised concerns that the government inappropriately surveilled his emails.
“It’s very expensive, and nobody’s called me and offered to help,” Caputo said in 2017. “The problem is, it’s very specialized representation, so it takes a certain type of attorney, and they’re quite competent. And you’ll pay for competency.”
“Russiagate almost killed me,” Caputo said. “It was 100% stress.”
TREASURY LAWYER RESIGNS AFTER DOJ CREATES ‘ANTI-WEAPONIZATION’ FUND
Caputo has continued to stand by Trump, despite the years of investigations into the Russia collusion allegations.
“The grass roots underneath Donald Trump are unlike anything I’ve seen in my 40 years of politics,” he told the New York Times on Wednesday. “Coming up against him today, it’s like, ‘Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.’”
