Trump's $1.776B fund: The symbolism hiding in plain sight
Sure, it’s a nod to the nation’s 250th anniversary, but it's also the rally cry of Jan. 6 rioters.
Get fact-based journalism that won’t memory-hole the crucial context.
One week before the Jan. 6 insurrection, then-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio received an email with a document titled “1776 Returns,” describing a plan to occupy federal buildings to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election.
“We need [as] many people as possible inside these buildings,” the document states. “These are OUR buildings, they are just renting space. We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”
In 2022, the document became critical evidence used by federal prosecutors to convict Proud Boys leaders of engaging in a seditious conspiracy to block the peaceful transfer of power in the United States by force, but the American Revolutionary imagery wasn’t simply a footnote to a single case in the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection. It was the rallying cry of the rioters, the #1776rebel hashtag that lit up right-wing social media, and the slogan shouted by MAGA organizers.
It’s also imagery that the Trump Justice Department landed on in announcing a $1.776 billion fund that could enrich hundreds of violent rioters who were convicted of assaulting law enforcement on Jan. 6 — and stand to potentially collect millions in taxpayer-funded bounties for illegally attempting to keep Trump in power by force.
That isn’t, of course, the Trump Justice Department’s official explanation for the size of its award.
The agreement establishing the fund implausibly asserts that the number is “based on the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims,” but nobody believes that the government arrived at the number randomly.
At the same time, almost every major news organization has ascribed the second-most innocuous explanation behind the government’s symbolism. The New York Times called the size of the award an “apparent nod to the nation’s founding.” The Washington Post called it “a nod to the year of the nation's founding.” Reuters called it a “nod to the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776.” CNN called it a “purposeful nod at the year of the country's founding, as the America 250 celebration approaches.”
There is, however, a more “evil” explanation that former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner identified.
“The evil reason is that [the slogan] was grabbed upon by the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers and the other insurrectionists as their rallying cry as they prepared to and then did invade Congress in an attempt to — by a coup — prevent Joe Biden from lawfully taking office, and they are the ones who stand to be enriched by the $1.776 billion fund,” Epner said.
The “1776 Returns” document used by the Proud Boys called upon rioters to “Storm the Winter Palace,” a reference to the Bolshevik Revolution.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol found that the Proud Boys did not adopt the plan “in full,” but the extremist group took it seriously enough that it was “significantly edited” while in their possession.
The year 1776 appears nearly two dozen times in the House Jan. 6 Committee Report, including in chants, slogans, hashtags and speeches by MAGA celebrities.
The day before the siege, right-wing broadcaster Alex Jones shouted in a speech: “It’s 1776!” Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander is quoted saying in the report: “I want them to know that 1776 is always an option,” referring to the message that he wanted to send to the “degenerates in the deep state.”
As the pro-Trump mob assembled in Washington D.C. the next morning, a documentary filmmaker recorded Jacob Chansley — the bare-chested, face-painted, Viking hat-sporting rioter known the as QAnon Shaman — shouting “this is our 1776.”
The Trump Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the size of the $1.776 billion fund was intended as a statement of solidarity with the rioters who stand to be enriched by it.
Thank you Adam, from across the pond in Europe. The amount of $1.776B seemed odd, but you have shone a light on the matter that explains the sinister reasoning behind it.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." - George Orwell
"A lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind... And with such a people you can then do what you please." — Hannah Arendt