Antony Vo was at a friend\u2019s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government \u2014 including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.<\/p>\n
Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot<\/a>, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m glad it turned into something,\u201d he explained, \u201cthat could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.\u201d<\/p>\n That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated \u2014 albeit somewhat stunned \u2014 at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many questions,\u201d said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced<\/a> to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. \u201cBut it\u2019s a good direction.\u201d<\/p>\n The formal decision of whether to offer restitution to the rioters had been kicking around the Justice Department for months<\/a>, delayed by internal wrangling. But in some sense, it had appeared inevitable that the Trump administration would ultimately funnel money to those who joined the mob on Jan. 6 given the president\u2019s relentless efforts to whitewash the events of that day<\/a>.<\/p>\n In one of the first official acts of his second term, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping proclamation that granted pardons to \u2014 or dismissed the charges against \u2014 all of the nearly 1,600 people indicted in connection with Jan. 6. He then began an aggressive purge<\/a> of the federal agents and prosecutors who were handed the task of building criminal cases against the people who took part in the attack.<\/p>\n The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.<\/p>\n It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government \u2014 claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.<\/p>\n