Andrew Weissmann

The way I look at this is Donald Trump as president has the pardon power.

And he can try and pardon all sorts of people.

He may even try to pardon himself.

But this is what you need to remember about the pardon power.

It relates to criminal cases.

It doesn't relate to civil cases.

So what he has done here is essentially given himself a civil pardon.

So he can sort of have sort of blanket immunity both on the criminal side and on the civil side.

So the fund will be this $1.776 billion.

Absent Congress or some other authority being able to put a stop to this, but assuming it goes forward, this money will be used by a commission to

Set up by the attorney general with five people appointed by him.

They can be removed.

Exactly.

And so they're very, very beholden to the wishes of the president and the acting attorney general.

And they will adjudicate and decide who is going to get this money.

And so that is an area where everyone is sort of rightly highly concerned that this could go to J6 defendants who were criminally convicted, including people who attacked J6.

including people that committed heinous crimes even after being pardoned by the president.

So it really, I think the correct term that people are using is a slush fund.

That really means that people who not only were pardoned

by the president after being found guilty of a crime are now actually going to be paid.