🇺🇸 JD Vance Reacts to DOJ Funds for J6 Patriots & Victims of Biden's 'Banana Republic' Lawfare

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]John, >> Vice President, thank you. I want to ask you about that $1.8 billion fund uh set up uh weaponization fund as it's being called. Uh why should taxpayers be paying to settle a $10 billion lawsuit that was brought by the president of the United States? And should people that attacked the Capitol building and assaulted police officers, should they be eligible? Should they receive money?

[00:00:26]Should they receive money from this?

[00:00:28]>> Well, let me say a couple things about that. First, John, I I think in some ways the media has misrepresented what this is actually about. This is about compensating Americans for the lawfare that we saw under the last administration. And by the way, anybody can apply for it. Republicans can apply for it. Democrats can apply for it. As you know, the president of the United States has pardoned a number of Democrats who he felt were actually subject to this lawfare. I mean, if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this particular fund, he is welcome to. It's going to go through a normal process where we vet everything, where we try to identify whether people's claims are actually legitimate. But but but but here's the question. You say, why should taxpayers fund this? Whenever the United States government incurs legal expenses, it pays out those legal expenses. When it it's settling a lawsuit, it pays out money to settle that lawsuit. And the question is, is a dollar of this money going to the Trump administration? No.

[00:01:20]Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump personally? No. Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump's family? No. The people that would get the money are people, some of whom have been prosecuted completely disproportionate to any crime they've ever committed. Like, let's just take a couple of examples. Uh Tina Peters is this woman who is about to get out of prison, thanks in large part to the president's good work, uh in in Colorado. This is a woman who at worst, if you believe everything that the prosecutors said about her, committed misdemeanor trespassing and somebody threw the book at her, this innocent grandmother was going to spend 10 years in prison, completely disproportionate to any misdemeanor trespassing that I've ever seen. Was that fair? No. Is it reasonable for her to get some compensation for the fact that she was treated unfairly? I think the answer is yes. And I think that what we're going to see hopefully is the entire country led by this Department of Justice turning the page on the lawfare. What I would like to propose, and I think the Democrats, you know, hopefully they're willing to meet us halfway here. I won't hold my breath. But what I would propose is something very simple that if you are willing to turn the page on Joe Biden's lawfare, why don't we prosecute people?

[00:02:31]Very simple principle. Why don't we prosecute people who violate the law?

[00:02:35]Let's not prosecute people because they said the wrong thing or because they had the wrong political candidate or because they had the wrong viewpoint. And I think part of that part of turning the page on that is to actually ensure the real victims of that lawfare receive some compensation. That's what this fund is going to be targeted at. And again, there's going to be a process to ensure that that money is only given to people who have actually, I hate to say, earned it, but the people who actually were really mistreated by the previous administration and Department of Justice.

[00:03:06]Go ahead. I understand that everybody is eligible to apply for this fund. I mean, you're eligible, but I assume you're not going to apply, and you don't think you should get money out of this fund. So, isn't it just as easy to say that people that attacked police officers should not get taxpayer money from this fund?

[00:03:22]>> Well, look, John, we're not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer. We're trying to give money, not give money, we're trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them. They were mistreated by the legal system. Sometimes, you know, we are we do have John in this in this country innocent until proven guilty. We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers. That does that that that that that doesn't that doesn't mean that we're going to completely ignore some of the claims that they're going to make. We're going to evaluate these things on a case-by case basis. And if we think that somebody, whatever they were accused of, if we think that somebody was unfairly prosecuted and deserves just compensation, then that's what this fund is going to exist to provide. It's just going to correct a wrong. And I think that's a good thing. And I'd encourage everybody, Democrat, Republican, independent, let's turn the page on this thing that we did under the last administration where we tried to throw people in prison because they had the wrong politics. Let's throw people in prison who broke the law. I think this fund is a good part of getting justice for the people who were wrongly treated >> back there. Yeah.

[00:04:28]>> Thank you, sir.

[00:04:29]>> Is that just a follow up on that quickly?

[00:04:32]>> Does that mean that people that were violent that were convicted were mistreated? Are you saying that?

[00:04:39]>> Well, you're asking me to comment on hypotheticals and on any any number of dozens of cases. Here's the thing. We're going to look at everything case by cases. you know, every single case has its own details. Every single case has, you know, there there there are things about it that maybe don't meet the eye.

[00:04:57]We're just going to look at every case case by case. That's all I'm saying. I'm not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money.

[00:05:04]What I'm committing to is a legal process to review the these claims and to make sure that people who are mistreated by their government get a little bit of compensation because of it. Just to follow up, um you previously told me that anyone who assaulted a police officer on January 6th should go to prison. So why not rule out giving them taxpayer funded money?

[00:05:24]>> Well, Caitlyn, what I said is we're going to look at everything case by case.

[00:05:28]>> Because Caitlyn, there are people who I don't know their individual circumstances and I don't rule things out categorically when I know nothing about a person's individual circumstances. Let's say a person is accused, let's just say hypothetically, a person is accused of doing something that they never actually did, that they got a kangaroo court, that they had a judge who mistreated them. I think that we should look at those things case by case. We're not making commitments to give anybody money. We're just making commitments to look at things case by case.

[00:05:59]>> Go ahead.

[00:06:01]>> Going back to the price tag for this DOJ fund, $1.8 billion. You have people that can't afford groceries. Gas is high.

[00:06:11]People are making sacrifices in their personal lives to accommodate for this rise in prices. People are telling us that they feel financially worse off.

[00:06:19]They're very concerned about the uncertainty. How can you justify that amount of taxpayer money for that fund when people are struggling? What do you say to Americans who wonder why this fund is getting all this money and I can't afford basic life amenities? Well, let me say a couple things about that.

[00:06:37]First of all, you said $1.8 billion, and it's important for people to realize we're not just writing a $1.8 billion check. We're going to take a lot of people who are going to apply and say that they have been mistreated by their government. We're going to handle those situations case by case. And if we determine they were in fact mistreated by their government, we think it's reasonable to give them just compensation. But when you talk about funds and and and pots of money that are out there, I mean, thanks to Donald Trump's leadership and the working families tax cut, we put $40 billion into a rural healthc care fund in order to stop the closure or at least prevent some closure of rural hospitals and rural clinics that had been decimated under the Biden administration. We had a piece of tax legislation that put hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of families. No taxes on social security, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on tips. So I I I don't I reject the idea that we can't walk and chew gum. At the same time, we can give just compensation to people who are mistreated by the government. We can also make sure that the American people, we do everything that we can to make their lives better, to make them more prosperous, to give them better jobs.

[00:07:46]That is the primary focus of Donald J.

[00:07:48]Trump's White House. That's the question all of us ask every single day is how do we make our fellow citizens more prosperous. We can do that while also taking care of people who were mistreated by the last administration.

[00:08:00]>> Yes. So I I don't know your name. You have a beautiful cross necklace though.

[00:08:04]So go ahead >> from LTV. Thank you so much. I have two questions. Um one of them is uh going back to the the $1.8 billion fund. Not to keep beating that but sadly Democrat lawmakers are misrepresenting that fund.

[00:08:17]Uh >> I agree. Yes. That's a great question.

[00:08:19]>> And if and sadly some of the mainstream media doesn't understand the magnitude of the political persecution of J6ers.

[00:08:25]So if a violent offender like a Jixer was still over sentenced and mistreated literally some of them were sentenced to 24 years in prison put on an unconstitutional pre-trial detention, literally tortured in cages, wouldn't that person still be able to apply for the fund because of due process? And um >> this is why we say, just to answer that very briefly, this is why we say we have to evaluate this thing case by case, right? We don't in the United States say that everybody who's accused of a crime is automatically guilty in a court of public opinion. You've got to actually look at this stuff and figure out what were they accused of. Maybe they did something bad even, but what they were accused of was way worse than what they actually did. Maybe they had their entire lives ruined in a totally disproportionate way. that's fundamentally illegitimate and political. And I I I find just car on this point, one of the interesting things about the American media is there is a fascination. If you go to any American law school, there are these, you know, prisoner rights clinic. There are people who objectively committed heinous crimes, but the American media and the American legal academy has decided that even though they committed bad crimes, their sentence was disproportionate. They were mistreated in some way. You know who never ever gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to that disproportionate sentencing is people who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6th protest.

[00:09:49]>> Go to your second question.

[00:09:51]>> David, he made a horrific obscene joke about the murder of your friend Charlie Kirk. What does this still say about where our political divisions have gone and what are you specifically doing to bridge the divide, especially as a potential future president?

[00:10:02]>> Well, sorry, who who was it said something?

[00:10:05]made a really obscene joke about the Charlie Kirk. So, what are you doing as a potential future candidate or president to bridge the divide?

[00:10:12]>> Well, first of all, I'm not a potential future candidate. I'm a vice president and I really like my job and I'm going to try to do as good of a job as I can.

[00:10:18]But let let me just say this. So, you talked about Pete Davidson who said something bad about Charlie Kirk. Look, Charlie was a very, very dear friend, but more importantly than that, Charlie was a father of two beautiful kids and he did not deserve to have all of those moments with his kids. all those moments with his beautiful wife taken from him in the way that that that happened. I would expect everybody everybody with a heart or a conscience would say whatever we agreed or disagreed with about his particular viewpoints, this is a tragedy and it's totally unacceptable that it happens in the United States of America.

[00:10:52]To their credit, a lot of the reporters in this room, even though I don't agree with their politics, they were open about the fact that what happened to Charlie was disgusting and it shouldn't happen in a civilized country. Um, you talk about bridging the the divide. I mean, one thing that happened that hits, you know, not quite literally close to home, but there was a very terrible shooting that happened today at a Muslim community center. It seems like three people are dead plus the shooters. And, you know, that that that community center is actually very close to this restaurant that Ush and I go to every time we visit. Her family lives in San Diego. She was born and raised in San Diego. every time we go to San Diego, we go to this restaurant that is like maybe a 5-minute drive from this community center. And I found out about it actually on my way to the White House this morning. And I texted her, I said, you know, would you have known anybody who was like involved in this? And she said, absolutely. I would have known some people or at least their parents who might have actually used the services at this community center. I don't know a single person who would say anything other than what I'm about to say, which is that that type of violence in the United States of America is reprehensible. And I encourage every single American to pray for everybody who was involved and affected by it. We don't want that to happen to our country. And may God rest the souls of the people who lost their lives. What what I I do find a little distressing is that while every person I know, every politically conservative person I know would say exactly what I said about these innocent people who were killed, there were a lot of people who were celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

[00:12:22]And I think one way that we can bridge the divide is just have a very simple principle in this country. Number one, we don't want the government throwing people in prison because they have bad politics. However you define bad politics. Number two, and way more importantly, political violence, wherever it comes from, is unacceptable in the United States of America. Let's talk with one another, not shoot each other when we disagree. I think that's the principle that everybody in this room agrees with. It's certainly the the principle the president of the United States agrees with.