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JohnnyYou » Today, 7:29 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 7:29 am

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/prou ... tion-fund/

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio expects "tens of millions" from anti-weaponization fund
By Jim DeFede
May 24, 2026 / 10:30 AM EDT / CBS Miami

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Enrique Tarrio, the former national head of the Proud Boys, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, says he will seek millions of dollars from the fund President Trump created to pay his supporters who believe they have been politically persecuted.

"Look, people don't have to like me, but to say that I got 22 years correctly, is wrong," Tarrio told CBS News Miami. "I was targeted and I do believe that this fund does apply to me."

Tarrio said since President Trump announced the formation of the $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund, he has been inundated with calls from others convicted for January 6 related activities.

"I've gotten probably a million calls in the past three days from J-6ers that are like, okay, how does this work?" Tarrio told CBS Miami's Jim DeFede. "And I'm like, look, I'm not, I'm not a guru. I don't I don't know how this works. I can only speculate."

The fund has drawn widespread outrage from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has offered no clear guidance on who would qualify for the money, or how it will be distributed. Blanche refused to rule out the notion that individuals convicted of assaulting police officers would be eligible to obtain money.

"Look, I get the argument that, 'Oh, well, do these people that assault police officers get it?'" Tarrio responded "And the truth is If they were weaponized against that, that is the parameter, if they were weaponized. It doesn't mean we're compensating these people just because they assaulted police officers, it's because of the system that they were in."

"I get it," Tarrio said. "People that did bad things, you don't want to give money from the government to. But it doesn't matter because the baseline of this is weaponization. Were you persecuted?"