A former Trump administration official and campaign aide, Michael Caputo, said Wednesday that he is filing a claim under the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recently created “anti-weaponization” fund, becoming the first person to publicly use the fund.
“The machinery of government was clearly politically weaponized against my family from July 2016 to December 2025,” Caputo wrote in a post on X, confirming he filed for compensation under the recently announced weaponization fund. “They found nothing; we lost everything.”
He also included a letter that he sent to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that said he was a target in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation that sought to evaluate whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign had colluded with the Russian government.
Caputo, a former assistant secretary under the Department of Health and Human Services in Trump’s first term, said in his letter that he was targeted in another investigation linked to a documentary he produced for One America News about former President Joe Biden and Ukraine.
Caputo told Blanche that he is seeking $2.7 million from the fund “to help repair what … is left of our family” and said that the “costs of the decade-long attack” are difficult to assess.
“This nine-year assault drained our savings, destroyed our peace of mind, ruined my career, wrecked my health, and wreaked far more havoc on our family,” he said, adding that “we never stopped trusting the President” and “we knew he would never let this injustice stand.”
Caputo added that he believes there are “thousands of families just like ours, all remnants of political weaponization, who are heartened by this announcement during the 250th birthday of our nation.”
Earlier this week, Blanche and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the fund, which will receive $1.776 billion as part of a settlement agreement in Trump’s personal case against the Internal Revenue Service.
“As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” Blanche said in a statement.
Democrats and government watchdogs immediately said they would fight the new resolution, saying that the arrangement would unjustly enrich people close to the president with taxpayer dollars and open the door to meritless claims of political persecution.
“This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (R-Md.) in a statement on Monday after it was announced by the DOJ.
Trump has long said that he was the victim of politically motivated prosecutions in several jurisdictions, including relating to federal charges in Washington and Georgia claiming he attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 election as well as on charges filed in Florida that he illegally retained classified documents at his Florida residence. Ultimately, those charges were dropped.
The one case that made it to trial was brought in New York City, where he was found guilty by a jury in 2024 on charges of falsifying business records in relation to the 2016 campaign. Trump, who pleaded not guilty, maintained that he was innocent, countering that both the Manhattan district attorney’s team and the judge in the case had displayed a political animus against him.
In April, the DOJ informed the Supreme Court that it settled a lawsuit that was filed by former Trump aide Carter Page, who alleged that his constitutional rights were violated as part of an FBI probe into the 2016 Russia allegations. The investigation into Page, who has long denied claims that he had improper ties with the Russian government, was flagged by the DOJ’s Inspector General’s office in a 2019 report that the FBI had engaged in “repeated and thorough surveillance abuses against Dr. Page.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times request for comment Wednesday.
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