Mother Jones
Trump’s “Weaponization” Claim Is Total BS
A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land_. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial._
Donald Trump’s pathetic and sleazy effort to create a slush fund of $1.776 billion that his lieutenants could dole out to his political allies, including, possibly, his violent January 6 brownshirts, appears to be dead. After even Republicans howled about this brazen corruption, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former (and, in a way, still) personal lawyer, proclaimed the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” kaput—though Trump continues to support this idea and there remains a possibility it could be revived in some form. But in all the brouhaha over this attempt by Trump to swipe nearly 2 billion smackers from American taxpayers, one damn big point has gotten lost: The claim that past administrations weaponized government against Trump and his right-wing confederates is complete bullshit.
There was no need for such a fund, because there were no such victims. This chief grievance of Trump and his MAGA cult is a myth that’s been created to cover up the many transgressions of Trump himself. And any acceptance of this notion of weaponization is a win for Trump.
Official reviews of the Russia investigation repeatedly declared it was a legitimate enterprise that was justifiably initiated and not a political hit job.
Trump has been braying for years that he has been the target of politically motivated investigations and prosecutions—what’s called lawfare. But that’s not true. The granddaddy of all this, as far as he is concerned, was the Russia investigation. He’s been moaning about the “Russia, Russia, Russia” probe for a decade, and through that stretch, he, his GOP lickspittles, and his right-wing media enablers have contended the investigation was a fraud cooked up by the Deep State, the Democrats, and the media.
But…no. Official reviews of the Russia investigation repeatedly declared it was a legitimate enterprise that was justifiably initiated and not a political hit job. This included a Justice Department inspector general report issued in 2019, a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee released in 2020 (when then-Sen. Marco Rubio chaired the committee), and the 2023 final report produced by special counsel John Durham, who had been appointed in 2019 by then–Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the investigation.
Each of these reviews concluded that inquiry was neither a hoax nor a witch hunt, as Trump and his lackey have never stopped proclaiming. (The IG report and Durham did criticize elements of the Russia investigation, most notably the FBI’s improper surveillance of Carter Page, a former adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign.) And the Senate Intelligence Committee report reaffirmed (as did special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report) the intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow covertly attacked the 2016 election in part to help Trump win the White House.
There was no weaponization on this front. The Russia investigation led to solid indictments of several Trump aides, including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, George Papdopoulos, and Roger Stone. Each of them either pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury. It was Trump who then politicized the process by pardoning all four at the end of his first term. (Trump’s Justice Department in April handed Flynn $1.25 million to settle an iffy lawsuit he filed that alleged he had been maliciously prosecuted, and the department can be expected to be sympathetic to similar claims from other Trump devotees.)
Trump’s other two big gripes about supposed weaponization concern the federal investigations mounted by special counsel Jack Smith of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged swiping of top-secret documents when he left the White House. Both these inquiries were fully justified. During the House January 6 committee’s investigation, multiple Republican witnesses testified that Trump took actions that were possibly criminal to try to retain power. And a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted to convict him of impeachment charges following his incitement of the January 6 riot. (It was not the supermajority needed for a conviction.)
In each of these cases, a jury or judge found Trump guilty—a sign the cases had merit.
As for the stolen-papers case, throughout 2021 and the first half of 2022, the National Archives and the Justice Department repeatedly tried to retrieve from Trump the sensitive records he held on to when he departed 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Had Trump returned the records, there would have been no prosecution. He did give back some of the material, and one of his attorneys certified that all documents had been sent back. But that was false, and an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago found 25 boxes that contained documents of the highest classification. The subsequent criminal case was no witch hunt.
Neither the stolen papers nor the 2020 election case went to trial because Smith closed them after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a Justice Department policy that states that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted on federal charges. (That’s the reason Mueller did not file obstruction of justice charges against Trump during the Russia investigation.)
Trump also argues that he was unfairly investigated in New York for tax fraud and for falsifying business records to cover up the hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had an extramarital tryst with Trump. In each of these cases, a jury or judge found Trump guilty—a sign the cases had merit.
Beyond Trump’s own personal beefs, the MAGA crowd claims that the federal government in the Biden years was weaponized against right-wingers. They assert that the FBI targeted conservative Christians and school-board activists. An internal memo from the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office, which was leaked in 2023, cited “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology as a possible pathway for domestic extremist violence. GOP officials and conservatives were outraged by this. But the memo was rescinded, and there was no evidence that it had resulted in any investigations or prosecutions. It was essentially the work of one junior analyst in a field office.
Right-wing groups also howled when the Biden Justice Department—following complaints that some parents protesting at school board meetings were threatening board members—issued a memo directing US attorney and FBI agents to discus this matter with local officials. They objected to comparing concerned parents—who often were religious conservatives—to terrorists. But this, too, did not lead to sweeping investigations of conservatives.
Then there’s January 6. MAGA luminaries—and Trump himself—have long championed the convicted rioters as victims of unfair and overreaching criminal investigations. A White House website—paid for with your tax dollars—makes this ludicrous case. And there was much worry that the Trump slush fund would dole out millions to these violent insurrectionists, thus endorsing and encouraging political violence.
Trump and his cult will continue insisting that he and his loyalists have been victimized by law enforcement. That’s what many crooks do.
To dub the prosecution of the J6 marauders “weaponization” of government is one of the biggest acts of gaslighting a White House has ever tried to pull off. It illustrates the fundamental absurdity of this propaganda campaign. We all saw what happened on that horrific day. Assailing the subsequent quest for justice as repressive federal overreach is bonkers and Orwellian in the extreme.
The investigations and prosecutions Trump bitches about were not acts of weaponization. They were appropriate government activity. But for years, Trump and his handmaids have been mounting this disinformation crusade without much opposition to its big lie. On top of that, Trump has shown us what the weaponization of government truly looks like with the criminal investigations he has ordered up of former FBI Director James Comey, New York state Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former CIA Director John Brennan, and others, as well as the assaults he has launched on major law firms and universities.
The idea that he should be given $1.8 billion to hand out to his supporters who ran afoul of the law was preposterous but so too is the assertion that Trump and his comrades have been the targets of pervasive government weaponization. Yet that’s a major component of Trump’s self-glorifying mythology: He’s the target of a Deep State cabal and a martyr for MAGA. The pot of money for his malfeasants may be gone for now—though Trump still says, “I love it. I think it’s so important.” Whatever ultimately happens, Trump and his cult will continue insisting that he and his loyalists have been victimized by law enforcement. That’s what many crooks do. In this case, it’s a MAGA fairy tale and a cover story for a criminal president that deserves as much resistance as the corrupt slush fund has drawn.