Jon Ossoff

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins said Tuesday that the federal government should compensate people it has harmed, appearing to endorse the broader premise behind a controversial political weaponization fund.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund was a proposed $1.776 billion fund established by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a settlement involving President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. The fund would use money from the federal judgment fund to provide monetary relief to people who claimed they had been victims of government “weaponization.”

Potential recipients included people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and other political allies.

Then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche formally rescinded the fund on Aug. 2, following weeks of negotiations with Republican senators who had been blocking his nomination to become attorney general.

At the campaign stop on Tuesday, Dominic Box, a convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionist and self-proclaimed “right-wing extremist,” asked Collins: “Would you support either the victims of political weaponization fund, compensation fund or some fund of compensatory relief, not just to January 6ers, like myself, but all Americans … who have become victims of a weaponized political system?”

“Yeah … when the federal government harms you, then, yes, they have a liability to. That’s easy, yes,” Collins said.

It was not immediately clear whether Collins was endorsing the specific $1.776 billion fund previously proposed by the Justice Department. That fund no longer exists, meaning Congress would have to create or authorize a new mechanism to provide such payments.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) held a brief online press conference on Wednesday in response to Collins’ comments.

“For a sitting congressman and candidate for the United States Senate to come out and call for taxpayer dollars to go to those violent thugs who attacked the Capitol is disgraceful,” Ossoff said.

A spokesperson with Collins’ team said that while Collins supports holding the government responsible when federal agencies abuse their power, he “does not support a blank-check fund or automatic taxpayer-funded payouts to anyone simply because they were prosecuted for January 6.”

Collins previously expressed sympathy for people prosecuted in connection with the Jan 6 riot. On Jan. 6, 2025, Collins posted on X describing the people who gathered in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, as “peaceful grandmothers” who had taken a “self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building.”

“Since then, hundreds of peaceful protestors have been hunted down, arrested, held in solitary confinement, and treated unjustly,” Collins wrote.

Box was found guilty of six federal charges, including two felony counts of civil disorder and four misdemeanors.

Ansley Franco is a reporter with the Savannah Morning News, covering public safety and general assignments. You can reach her at [email protected].