Andrew Weissmann

So you sort of have a paid army of people who don't have to worry about criminal liability and are actually going to be able to put in a claim to be compensated for their activities that are criminal and have been found to be criminal.

That's one where I would say we know that in the papers so far, there is no provision for this being public.

Now, it could end up being that the people who are in charge of this decide that it all should be public, that there should be transparency involved.

And in the nature of transparency, I should tell you, and I'm being somewhat facetious, but it's in some ways not facetious, Terry, which is I was the subject of two executive orders by this president, one of which was struck down by a federal judge finding that my personal First Amendment rights were violated.

So I actually have a judicial finding that I am a victim of weaponization and that my constitutional rights were violated.

So I technically...

am eligible for compensation by this fund.

Now, I don't think there is a snowball's chance that I am going to be compensated by a group of five people appointed by Donald Trump or somebody who is his amanuensis.

But it tells you that we could see a real politicization about how the fund is distributed, where people who are actually factually

victims of weaponization do not get money, but people who are criminals and adjudicated criminals are paid.

I think that if no one else does, I think it's very important for people to test this.

And if it's not being done by anyone else, I will do it because I think there are many, many ways that this program can be legally challenged.

But one is what's called viewpoint discrimination.

So if somebody like me were to sue saying, wait a second, I am absolutely comparable to the people that you are giving funds to, then that's something that a court can step in and say that you have violated either the

the Equal Protection Clause, you have violated the Administrative Procedures Act, and there are various challenges.

On the fly, I'm not going to rattle off all the ways this could be challenged, but I do think that that is sort of a back-end point that we should keep our eye on in terms of how this is adjudicated, because it surely is going to be the subject of litigations.

So one of the things that I found disingenuous is that Todd Blanch, as the acting attorney general, has the authority to have created rules that said that if you are a convicted felon, if you have assaulted police officers, and other categories, he had the authority to say that you cannot apply for these funds, that you are not a victim of weaponization.

especially since there's a criminal justice system that can handle that.

In other words, if anyone thought they were wrongly convicted.

So to try and duck by saying, well, that'll be left to others to decide,