Jake Auchincloss

A “brazen act of corruption.”

That’s how U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss describes the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to create a $1.77 billion slush fund to funnel payouts to allies of President Donald Trump who say they were targeted by the previous White House.

“These are taxpayer dollars being used to enrich friends, family and felons in service of Donald Trump,” Auchincloss, D-4th District, told MassLive in a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday. “And Trump is showing the American people what he does with power, which is he uses it to enrich himself and his courtiers and hangers-on.”

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion is part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The number is intended as a patriotic evocation of the nation’s founding.

It also will allow for what acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has called a “lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” The Associated Press reported.

Government watchdogs have called the fund unconstitutional. It also prompted a top U.S. Treasury Department lawyer, Brian Morrissey, to resign in protest, The New York Times and other outlets reported.

For Auchincloss, that’s proof enough that the fund is illegitimate at its core.

Morrissey should be brought to Capitol Hill to testify under oath about “all the gnarly details,” so that lawmakers can use that knowledge to keep the money from ever being paid out, he said.

Among those who could benefit from the taxpayer-funded payouts are the people who were punished for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021 sacking of the U.S. Capitol.

Auchincloss and other Democrats see that as part of the ongoing effort by Trump and his lieutenants to rewrite the history of the attack on the Capitol, injuring more than 140 police officers.

Four more law enforcement officers died by suicide in the weeks and months after the attack. Another, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, suffered two strokes nearly eight hours after being sprayed with a chemical irritant during the riot, according to published reports.

Some Trump supporters also died in connection with the riot. They included Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from San Diego who died on the day of the riot after she was shot in the shoulder by a Capitol Police officer.

“Yes, they’re trying to rewrite it. But I don’t think they’ll be successful because the American public isn’t dumb,” Auchincloss said.

There, Auchincloss may be optimistic. Polling in the days after the attack found that a quarter of Americans believed the FBI instigated the riots. That belief was particularly entrenched among Republicans.

Auchincloss predicted Tuesday that the Republican White House would try to weave the narrative of the Capitol insurrection into the nation’s 250th birthday celebration this summer.

“You’re going to see them try to tie in the J6 rioters into the lineage of anti-tyranny and protest,” he said. “I guarantee they’re going to do that.”

Again, recent polling suggests that some Americans might be open to the message: A substantial number of Americans now think that at least one of the attempts on Trump’s life was staged.

Heading into the thick of a consequential 2026 midterm campaign, where control of both sides of Capitol Hill is on the line, Auchincloss is betting that Democrats can counter with more effective messaging.

If Trump bends power to his own ends, then “Democrats need to show Americans what we would do with power, which is to treat cost disease in housing, health care and energy,” Auchincloss said, using the economic term to describe what happens when prices outpace wages.

“We’re going to use power to lower prices,” he said.

Democrats are still favored to retake the U.S. House — even with recent Republican gains in redistricting — and are believed to have an outside shot at flipping the U.S. Senate as well.

The redistricting arms race, kicked off in Texas last year, is “MAGA ... looking at their disastrous record on Iran, on cost of living, on crime” and “realizing that the voters won’t choose them in November. So they’re trying to choose their voters.”

Democrats in California and Virginia and elsewhere have responded in kind with maps intended to help Democrats. The Virginia effort was dealt a fatal blow last week after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to let the state use its map.

“The Texas gerrymander was a new stage of civil lawfare in this country,” he said. “And the spiraling is going to continue to disenfranchise voters.”

Democrats need to fight back, but “ultimately what we need are fair maps across all 50 states so that all 435 congressional seats are competitive every November.”

That’s a three-pronged effort that involves fixing the primary system and getting rid of gerrymandering, as well as overturning Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates for money in politics.

“That’s the project in front of us,” he said.

That will take some doing. And it won’t all be done in time for November’s election. Besides, Auchincloss has other priorities on his mind.

It’s a blending of the wisdom of Saint Augustine (who famously prayed for virtue, but “not yet.”) and former First Lady Michelle Obama’s admonition that “when they go low, we go high.”

With a big election on the line, “I would say when they go low, we go high — but not yet," Auchincloss quipped.