The Trump administration unveiled its $1.7 billion fund earlier this week, but in practical terms, the gambit, slammed by critics as a “slush fund,” doesn’t yet exist. In fact, the president’s former defense lawyer, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, will be responsible for choosing five people to administer the fund for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, and for now, that panel has no members.
But that didn’t stop one familiar figure from submitting the first known claim as part of the so-called anti-weaponization fund. NOTUS reported:
Former Trump administration official Michael Caputo on Tuesday filed the first known claim under the Justice Department’s new $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” claiming he was the target of “political weaponization.” […]
“I was the target of the illegal Crossfire Hurricane investigation and our family suffered greatly during that dark era of political weaponization,” Caputo wrote in a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, referencing the FBI’s 2016 investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and individuals associated with Trump’s first presidential campaign.
CNN was first to report on Caputo submitting his claim.
If the former official’s name sounds at all familiar, it’s because Caputo has generated plenty of headlines in recent years. Over several months in 2020, for example, the longtime Republican political operative and Roger Stone protégé served in a leadership role at the Department of Health and Human Services, which did not go well: After allegedly trying to interfere with scientific reports and clashing with career government scientists, whom he accused of “sedition,” Caputo declared in a Facebook video that his “mental health has definitely failed.”
After the Republican president returned to the White House, Caputo returned to Trump’s camp, joining Ed Martin’s team.
Caputo was never charged, but former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report identified an instance in which Caputo had a covert interaction with Russia and brokered a meeting between Stone and a Russian operative.
In his letter to Blanche, Caputo also said that in 2021, he was subjected to another investigation as part of a One America News documentary about Joe Biden and Ukraine.
Now, evidently, Caputo believes he’s entitled to $2.7 million from a fund that hasn’t yet begun writing checks. Watch this space.
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