A former Trump 1.0 official is the first to throw his hat in the ring for the president’s new $1.776 billion slush fund aimed at financially compensating those who claim that they were “politically targeted” by the federal government.
Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump adviser who served as a Health and Human Services spokesman during the president’s first administration, filed the first known claim to the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” according to CNN.
The outlet reported that Caputo, 64, wrote in a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that he was “a 2016 target of the illegal Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” and asked for $2.7 million in compensation.
CNN said the former HHS assistant secretary claimed in the letter that he had continued to be under investigation until December 2025, and that “our family suffered greatly during that dark era of political weaponization.”
“As soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021, his FBI initiated yet another secret criminal investigation into me, this time regarding my One America News documentary, ‘The Ukraine Hoax,’ which detailed Biden corruption in Ukraine,” Caputo wrote.
“The machinery of government was clearly politically weaponized against my family from July 2016 to December 2025. 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 continued. “They found nothing; we lost everything.”
“Despite all this, we never stopped trusting the President; we knew he would never let this injustice stand,” Caputo added. “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 — a truly historic act of Presidential mercy in a jubilee year."
Neither the DOJ, former President Joe Biden, nor Caputo immediately returned the Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation, declassified by the White House last year, was the code name for the FBI’s probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, specifically focused on coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The FBI’s work on Crossfire Hurricane was followed by the 2017-2019 Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, which culminated in the Mueller Report. All of that was under Trump’s first administration.
Before working for the first Trump administration, Caputo had previously lived in Russia and served as an adviser to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1995.
He testified before the House Intelligence Committee in July 2017, saying, “The only time I spoke about Russia with Donald Trump was in passing, during a dinner conversation in 2013, long before he decided to run for President. He simply asked me in the context of a dinner conversation what was it like to live in Russia.”
Trump’s Justice Department, under Blanche’s supervision, established the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund of taxpayer money as part of a settlement for the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, will appoint a five-member commission to control the fund, each of whom can be removed by Trump at any time without cause. One member of the commission will be chosen in collaboration with Congress.
The settlement agreement says that those paid by the fund will remain anonymous to the public, as will the amount they receive.
It also astoundingly bars the president and his family members, including his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., from being audited or prosecuted for unpaid taxes.
