Justice Department Pays Millions to Trump Allies in Cases the Government Had Won

Details

Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Justice Department has taken an unusual approach to the investigations that previous administrations brought against his allies: rather than defending the government's conduct in court, it has paid the subjects of those investigations to settle. A Washington Post investigation published April 25, 2026, found the department had paid more than $8.5 million to resolve high-profile claims from Trump allies and supporters—many of them in cases that judges had dismissed or that the Biden administration had been prepared to defend at trial. Subsequent reporting on payments to fired FBI agents pushed the documented total past $11 million.

The settlements advance a narrative Trump has pressed for years—that the federal government wrongly investigated him and his supporters—even though no court has ruled that the underlying investigations were improper. Critics, including former Justice Department officials, argue the payments amount to the government rewarding political allies with taxpayer money for claims the courts rejected. The administration counters that it is compensating genuine victims of prosecutorial abuse. The two framings are not entirely incompatible: in several of the cases the underlying treatment was demonstrably flawed, yet the legal claims built on it had still failed in court, and the officials approving the payments had personal ties to the people receiving them.

The Settlements

Carter Page

On April 22, 2026, the department reached a $1.25 million settlement with Carter Page, a foreign-policy adviser to Trump's 2016 campaign who was subjected to secret surveillance during the FBI's Russia investigation. Page had sued the government and former FBI officials for $75 million, but a federal judge dismissed the suit—in part because Page had not sued the individuals who actually conducted the surveillance—and an appeals court upheld that dismissal. The settlement, disclosed in a filing with the Supreme Court, did not resolve Page's separate effort to revive claims against former officials including ex-FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Page's case rests on the strongest factual foundation of any of the settlements. In December 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz identified 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications used to monitor Page, finding that FBI personnel fell "far short" of the requirement that such applications be scrupulously accurate. FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August 2020 to altering a CIA email to falsely indicate Page had not been a CIA source, and the department later told the surveillance court that the final two of the four warrants targeting Page were not valid.

At the same time, Horowitz found no evidence that political bias drove the decision to open the investigation, and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that Page's prior contacts with Russian intelligence officers justified the FBI's initial concern. The legal question the settlement sidestepped was therefore not whether the surveillance was flawed—it plainly was—but whether Page's specific claims, dismissed by two courts on procedural grounds, would ever have succeeded.

Michael Flynn

In March 2026, the department settled with Michael Flynn, Trump's first-term national security adviser, for $1.25 million. Flynn had sought $50 million, alleging malicious prosecution and entrapment. Flynn had pleaded guilty—twice, in open court—to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and he became a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation before changing lawyers, withdrawing his cooperation, and seeking to retract his plea. Attorney General William Barr moved to drop the case in 2020, and Trump pardoned Flynn later that year. The Biden Justice Department fought Flynn's subsequent civil suit, which a judge dismissed; the Trump department settled it after Flynn refiled. In April 2026, the administration agreed to a second settlement with Flynn, resolving his claim that the Army had illegally garnished his retirement pay, for an undisclosed sum.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, demanded records on the Flynn deal, arguing in an April 6 letter that the department's abrupt reversal from a winning position was circumstantial evidence the parties were not genuinely adversarial—and that the deal might therefore be barred under the "collusive lawsuit doctrine." Flynn's attorney, Jesse Binnall, defended the settlement, saying Flynn had been targeted by a weaponized FBI and comparing the payment to settlements the government previously reached with former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

Mark Houck

In February 2026, the department settled with Mark Houck for $1.1 million. Houck, a longtime anti-abortion activist, was indicted during the Biden administration on charges that he assaulted a volunteer escort outside a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood clinic, in a case brought under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. A jury acquitted him in January 2023 after roughly an hour of deliberation. Houck and his wife then sued the government for malicious prosecution and excessive force, alleging that the predawn FBI arrest at their home—carried out in front of their seven children—caused lasting trauma. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, dismissed the suit with prejudice in March 2025, finding Houck had not stated a plausible claim. The department settled for more than $1 million while Houck's appeal was pending.

Houck told the Post that progress began once his lawyers reached Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the department's No. 3 official and a Trump appointee. Woodward defended the deal, saying he would not have settled a case he saw no merit in and that there was real litigation risk to the department. Of the criminal cases underlying the settlements, Houck's is the most sympathetic—he was acquitted at trial—even though a judge later dismissed his civil claim.

Ashli Babbitt and the January 6 Claims

In 2025, the department paid nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer during the January 6, 2021, attack. The wrongful-death suit, brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch, had sought $30 million; the Biden Justice Department had been prepared to defend the government at trial, and an internal investigation had found the officer's actions lawful. Outgoing Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said he was extremely disappointed and warned the deal sent a chilling message to law enforcement.

Babbitt's case is part of a broader wave. Following Trump's first-day pardon of roughly 1,600 January 6 defendants, more than 450 people accused or convicted in connection with the riot have filed compensation claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Mark McCloskey—the St. Louis lawyer who gained notoriety in 2020 for pointing a rifle at protesters and who now represents several accused rioters—has said he hopes the administration will settle. Leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, convicted of seditious conspiracy, have also pursued civil claims; in April 2026 the department moved to vacate the seditious-conspiracy convictions of a dozen of them while, for now, opposing the related civil lawsuit.

Fired FBI Agents

In May 2026, House Judiciary Committee Democrats reported that the department had approved more than $3 million in payments to FBI agents who had been fired, suspended, or stripped of security clearances. In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Raskin alleged the agents had been disciplined for conduct including leaking classified information, lying to investigators, declining to pursue extremist groups, and participating in the January 6 attack. He cited an agent who he said refused to investigate the white-nationalist group Patriot Front and was found to have engaged in commercial sex while on an overseas assignment, yet was reinstated and paid several hundred thousand dollars; an agent who entered a restricted area of the Capitol on January 6 and allegedly lied about it, who received a $63,500 lump sum plus back pay; and an agent accused of communicating classified information about Chinese intelligence to reporters, who was awarded $15,000 after resigning.

Raskin identified two common threads: the agents were Trump supporters, and they were represented by Empower Oversight, a nonprofit tied to former staffers of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, whose current staff he said had taken part in settlement discussions—an arrangement he flagged because Blanche may seek Senate confirmation before Grassley's committee.

Empower Oversight pushed back forcefully. Its president, Tristan Leavitt, dismissed Raskin's letter as a "temper tantrum," said routine settlements are common when agencies face administrative complaints, and disputed Raskin's characterizations point by point: the group denies the Patriot Front agent engaged in commercial sex and says he objected to a warrant application that omitted exculpatory evidence; it says the January 6 agent did not know he was entering a restricted area, left before violence broke out, and was found by a DOJ inspector general not to have lacked candor after passing a polygraph; and it says the China analyst did not leak to reporters and instead faced retaliation, in part for declining a COVID-19 vaccine and raising internal concerns. Grassley defended the agents and his office from the Senate floor, calling the attack on whistleblowers improper and arguing the Trump department deserved credit for correcting Biden-era wrongs.

Mark Meadows

Mark Meadows, Trump's first-term chief of staff, has asked the department to reimburse legal fees he incurred during state and federal investigations into the effort to overturn the 2020 election. The department had not formally responded as of late April.

How the Settlements Work

Most of these claims run through the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which lets individuals seek damages from a federal agency for the negligent acts of its employees. A claimant first files an administrative claim; the agency then has six months to settle or deny it before the claimant can sue. Rupa Bhattacharyya, former director of the Justice Department's Torts Branch, told The Hill that FTCA claims are among the most active areas of litigation against the government and are filed every day—a point the administration cites in defending the deals. But she noted that the claims that typically settle at the administrative stage are matters like traffic accidents or medical malpractice, "where it's pretty clear somebody did something wrong," and said settlements of this kind are not used in cases like these.

What distinguishes the settlements, critics say, is the combination of three features: the claims had typically been rejected by courts; the government had strong defenses it chose not to press; and the officials approving the deals had personal ties to the beneficiaries. Under the Justice Manual, proposed settlements above $4 million must be approved by the deputy attorney general or associate attorney general.

The Conflicts of Interest

The officials with authority over the larger settlements are, in several cases, the same lawyers who once represented Trump or his co-defendants. Acting Attorney General Blanche, the former deputy attorney general, was one of Trump's lead defense lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified-documents case. Associate Attorney General Woodward represented Trump's co-defendant Walt Nauta in the same case. Attorney General Pam Bondi previously worked as a Trump lawyer and, in July 2025, fired Joseph Tirrell, the department's top ethics adviser—the official who would normally counsel leadership on recusal questions.

Ethics specialists across the political spectrum have flagged the structure. Stephen Gillers of NYU Law argued that officials who serve at the president's pleasure cannot make a disinterested decision about claims that benefit the president or his allies, because their interest in keeping their jobs conflicts with their duty to the United States. Edward Whelan, a conservative former Justice Department lawyer, called the broader arrangement a glaring conflict of interest. Bhattacharyya's recommendation in the most acute case—Trump's own $230 million claim—was that the officials do nothing at all, since both granting and denying it would pose an ethics conflict.

The Case for the Settlements

The administration frames the payments as overdue justice for people genuinely wronged by past administrations. A Justice Department spokesperson said it was the department's predecessors who weaponized the Justice Department against Trump's allies, described targeting citizens for political purposes as a severe violation of civil liberties, and maintained that the department settles only cases it can settle under the Justice Manual. Woodward, who approved several of the deals, said he believed compensation was warranted and that the cases carried real litigation risk.

Some facts lend partial support to this view. The Page surveillance was, by the inspector general's own account, riddled with serious errors, and an FBI lawyer was criminally convicted for falsifying evidence used to obtain it. FTCA settlements are common; the prior administration itself agreed to a $138 million settlement over the FBI's mishandling of the Larry Nassar abuse allegations, and it settled with former FBI officials Strzok and Page after improperly releasing their text messages. Houck was acquitted by a jury, making his the most sympathetic of the criminal cases even though a judge dismissed his civil claim. Defenders argue that a court dismissing a suit on procedural grounds does not settle whether the underlying treatment was unjust.

The Case Against

The objections are largely about process and precedent rather than whether any individual claimant has a grievance. James Pearce, a former member of the special counsel team that prosecuted Trump, called the deals "collusive settlements" that undermine the rule of law, noting that no judge had suggested the underlying lawsuits were likely to prevail—indeed, courts had dismissed them. Former Justice Department officials told the Post there is normally a high bar before taxpayer money is paid out, and that paying claims judges have rejected sends the wrong message.

The conflicts of interest are the sharpest concern. Raskin wrote that the department was squandering tax dollars on claims that multiple federal judges had rejected as meritless, and he characterized the FBI-agent payments as an astounding and lawless abuse of government office, routed through a Grassley-linked group while Blanche himself faces potential confirmation before Grassley's committee. A recurring legal argument is the collusive-lawsuit doctrine: that Article III requires a genuine adversarial dispute, and that the government's sudden surrender of winning positions suggests the litigation was arranged to reach a predetermined result.

Status (as of June 2026)

The individual settlements—more than $11 million across the high-profile cases plus the FBI-agent payments—have been paid and are not easily reversed. Raskin's investigation into the FBI-agent payments is ongoing, Meadows's reimbursement request remains pending, and more than 450 January 6 compensation claims await a response. The broader practice the settlements established—using the Justice Department's settlement authority to pay claims that courts had rejected, approved by officials who once worked for the beneficiaries—has not been disavowed.

The same logic later produced the administration's most expansive action of all: a May 2026 deal in which Trump settled his own $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, the department created (and then, under bipartisan backlash and a court injunction, shelved) a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," and an addendum granted the Trump family immunity from tax audits. Because that settlement is a distinct and far larger matter—and because the president was himself the beneficiary—it is treated in its own entry.