Pardons and Payouts: The Chamberlain Network Responds to the Trump Administration’s January 6 Settlement Fund
Atlanta, GA - The Chamberlain Network today demands accountability for the Trump administration's creation of a $1.776 billion fund that could direct taxpayer money to the nearly 1,600 people charged or convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
The Justice Department announced the fund to compensate individuals the administration claims were unfairly targeted by the previous administration — an unprecedented arrangement in which the president's own Justice Department settled a lawsuit brought by the president himself. Legal experts have described the original lawsuit as a "collusive suit" because the president sued his own government and settled between two entities he controls.
The Chamberlain Network has been clear: the January 6th attack was a violent assault on the Constitutional system. A system that generations of American veterans have sworn to defend and many gave their lives to do so. Pardoning those convicted for their roles in that attack was wrong. Compensating them with public funds makes it worse.
No American is above the law. Not those who attacked the Capitol, and not those in power who would use public institutions to protect themselves. This settlement does both: it directs taxpayer dollars to people who attacked our representative democracy and were convicted of crimes against the United States people, and it also gives the president and his own family an unprecedented exemption from public accountability.
"The people who participated in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th attacked the foundations of American democracy," said Chris Purdy, CEO and Founder of The Chamberlain Network. "It was a planned, coordinated, and violent attack designed to change the outcome of an election. Both the pardons and this payout undermine accountability and the rule of law, subvert the work that law enforcement and our military do to protect our nation, and legitimize the insurrectionists.”
The Chamberlain Network works to protect healthy democratic institutions — the courts, the rule of law, and the principle that government serves the people, not the powerful. A fund structured to reward the president's political allies and family, drawn from the public treasury, with limited oversight and no clear accountability, is a threat to those institutions.
We will continue to watch, to speak, and to act.
