Bulwark Takes - Every MAGA Grifter in America is Lined Up for a Piece of Trump’s Slush Fund

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Andrew Egger and Will Sommer take on the chaos erupting inside the January 6th world now that Trump's $1.776 billion "weaponization" slush fund is real — including two MAGA lawyers in an all-out war over who gets to skim 30% off the rioters' windfall, and one miraculous lung recovery that happened to coincide with the fund's announcement.Make today a good day, and get yourself some Soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering 30% off your entire order! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES.The Trio is live in San Diego on Wednesday, May 20th—grab your tickets at https://thebulwark.com/events.

The Trump administration's weaponization fund, billions of dollars for Trump allies like January 6 defendants. It's here. It's arrived. It's official. It's announced. And the J6 defendants, the Trump allies, they are already scurrying like crazy to figure out how to get a piece of that sweet, sweet cheddar. Here to talk about it all, break it all down, break up, break down the infighting that's already taking place and a lot of other things. Will Summer, our MAGA correspondent, our expert in all things, online and Trumpy. There's a lot of that online Trumpy stuff happening right now. Well, we've already done so much content about this awful, skeevy settlement fund.

We can kind of set all that to the side about just how sort of grotesque the whole thing is for the time being and zero in on the sort of human tragic comedy that we're already seeing take place for some of these long-suffering MAGA guys. You know, they got their pardon, but they were really hoping for a little bit extra off the top for their loyalty under fire. Now they're maybe getting it and they're kind of fighting. brighten over what it's going to look like. Maybe first walk us through what kind of the intervening period has been, the long, fallow period for these guys where they just weren't here and very much from the White House and then where are we today? Yeah, so this is a tasty little plum we have to discuss. You know, for people like us who are upset about this settlement fund who think this is

crazy, you know, at least this is a little comedy for you. So we don't know who exactly is going to get money from this fund, but probably the biggest group that's going to be applying is January 6th rioters, defendants. And now for years, even before they were pardoned by Trump last year, they were thinking, we deserve January 6th reparations. Now, this is pretty crazy because they attacked the Capitol. They attacked police officers in many cases. It's crazy, lucky of them and another travesty of justice that they were pardoned. And yet, they're still like, oh, by the way, I'm going to need maybe a million or two, break it off for me. So they have long dreamed of these reparations. Our colleague Tim did.

a video mentioning that one of the, one of them was recently busted for child molestation and was vowing to bribe one of his victims allegedly with saying, look, I got the reparations money right around the corner. So the idea of reparations has loomed large in the January 6th world. And so the key figures here to understand are a guy named Peter Tickton, who's sort of a celebrity Trump lawyer and Mark McCloskey, who people may remember. My boy. Yes. Your boy, I guess. hometown hero, St. Louis. Mark McCloskey, who's famous, of course, 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests,

he stood outside his mansion with his wife as protesters went through their neighborhood. He had like kind of an assault rifle, AR-15 looking thing, and she had a pistol. Look like hanging. Yeah, iconic picture. And then they had some legal issues after that. But last year, Tickton, McCloskey, they're both lawyers, they teamed up to get justice for January 6th. Yeah, I mean, I have not followed Tickton nearly as closely as I have. McCloskey. I mean, McCloskey has been just sort of peripheral figure, not just because,

like me, he is a St. Louis boy, but also because he's been just sort of cropping up. I think he ran very briefly for governor of Missouri, maybe, or Senator. I can't remember what his last thing was, yeah, did not go very far in the primary before transitioning into this new grift. But unfortunately for Mr. Mark McCloskey, his timing on this has been poor, right? I mean, like that meme of the man digging through the coal mine who gives up, like, right with the diamonds. right in front, right? Can you walk us through what his kind of, it's exactly, what his journey. You know, every, every gambler stops right before hitting January 6 reparations. So, yeah, so these guys, they teamed up and they got, I think, it's fair to say, hundreds of January 6 people to sign on

with them. Supposedly, there was a, there were contract signed, you know, like any other lawyer working on spec, Dominic Box, who's one of the January 6 defendants, he said, McCloskey wanted 30% of any settlement, which, you know, I guess maybe doesn't seem that unreasonable if you thought you had to sue the government, right? So these guys get huge amounts of defendants. McCloskey delivers, like, all these boxes and boxes to the Justice Department. He posed for, like, a very swag-looking picture and a double-breasted coat. And he's like, you know, here I am in D.C. making it happen for you guys. And, you know, the other thing I would say about Peter Tickton is his claim to fame is that he went to high school with Donald Trump at this military academy. And he's been coasting on this ever since.

He's like, everything I knew about Trump, I learned, you know, he was just such a cool guy in high school. So these are our characters, right? So it looks pretty bleak, though. Last month, you know, it seemed pretty unlikely, you know, Trump had been in office more than a year. It seems like, you know, they're going to get the partons and told the buzz off. Then McCloskey, he sends a letter to his clients and they're kind of their mutual clients. And he says, you know, I have these personal issues. He later reveals that it's like a terminal lung disease diagnosis. He says, you know, as a result, I can no longer represent you in our quest for January 6 reparations. I'm going to have to hand you off to

our buddy Peter Tickton, and I, you know, see you later. Unfortunately for him, a month later, of course, so ABC reported last week, I believe Wednesday that this reparations fund was going to happen. Day after that, they reported on Thursday. On Friday, Mark McCloskey reemerges, and he says, baby, I'm back. I'm better than ever. He says, in his letter to his, he has a new letter to his clients, he says, I just got a CT scan, the lungs are killing it, you know.

You know? I'm happy for him. I'm happy for him. I think it's great news. All the best on your personal health journey, Mark. Sorry. Yeah, he's huffing and puffin. It's great.

He says, together, you and I with God willing, we're going to get our January 6th money. So Peter Tickton, he's sitting at Tickton Incorporated or whatever, the Tickton and partners. And he's like, wait a minute, I took this thing over. This guy ditched us. So this starts a feud. And Peter says, I don't want to. want anything to do with you, buddy. So they start emailing the January 6th defendants. They're saying, you got to stick with me. So Mark McCloskey emails and he says, look, I'm back. Now, I understand

you guys are with Peter Tickton now, but you got to come with me. I note that Peter Tickton is campaigning to be attorney general to make himself the replacement for Pant Bondi. He's representing the Tiger King. He's representing a member of the Backstreet Boys who was involved in some kind of dispute on a beach where he used a homophobic slur. And he's representing Tina Peters. Now, You know, Tina Peters, just recently pardoned last week. Frankly, I'd stick with her lawyer because apparently he knows that a good things done. But he says, look, he's too busy.

He can't handle January 6th stuff. You guys got to go with me. And by the way, he's been saying some ugly stuff about me and my wife. So let me know if he's talking to any more trash on us. And it's a little unclear what that was. This has been the most amazing thing to me. So first of all, let me just clarify. These emails that you have your hands on that you were showing me earlier, are you

reporting these emails out there? No, this required a little sleuthing by. me. You know, the sort of the initial, like, I'm sick. I got a bow out. That one was public, but I had to do a little digging. This is, this certainly set off a big buzz in the January 6th world. I can't stress enough how much of this is going down on Facebook. It's a lot of, like, aggrieved defendants of their relatives. And so when this Dominic box guy, I mentioned, this defendant, he posted, like, he's like, whoa, Tickton and McCloskey, they're tearing each other up. And then everyone was like, shut up, you know, don't, don't spill the beans.

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But I mean, it is just really funny. It really is just these two former business partners who kind of went their separate ways amicably before. But now that there's suddenly all this money at stake, they're both sort of separately emailing their entire J6 client base, right? And basically saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't go with him. Stick with me. I'm the one who's going to get you through to the promised land. But the weird, I mean, the extra weird thing, it's all weird.

But like the additional further weird thing here is that it's no longer necessarily that obvious that any of these guys really need lawyers at all. Right. I mean, really, at this point, these guys would be more like lobbyists to the fund on their behalf or something like that. Right? Or what is the role of these guys anyway? It's kind of a tricky thing because in a way it sort of seems like McCluskey and Tickton have essentially been acting less like lawyers and more.

kind of like lobbyists or advocates. Like they've been trying to convince people to make these payments happen. And so, you know, it seems as though, you know, according to the Justice Department, people are kind of just going to have to fill out forms. And we know that it seems like Trump wants this money to get out there. You know, I don't think the government is going to be that, like, have that tight a grip on it if you're a January 6th person. Now, they claim, you know, it doesn't, it's a bipartisan supposedly effort. So I don't know if you said, yeah, I'm Antifa and I was prosecuted by the Justice Department. I don't think they'll be handing it over. But I think for Magot people, they're like, sure, take all you want. And so as a result, I think a lot of

these people are now saying, you know, I don't need a lawyer. I mean, I included it in false flag. I include a lot of examples. Someone says, ha ha, too late bitches. You know, these people who are like, I'll be taking all 100% of my payment. Yeah, yeah. I do wonder, I don't understand really what the, what the financial structure of these agreements was before. For McCloskey and Tickton, the way they were getting paid by these January 6 defendants. Was it always structured as like, if you get a settlement, we'll get a chunk of that and that's it? Or were they like actually squeezing a little bit of money out of these people while they sort of strung them along that something like this was possible in the first place? That's a good question. And I mean, I think we're talking about hundreds

of people here. So I can't really like speak to every individual one. But it does seem like most of this was on spec like they were saying. And I think it was also kind of like batch work. Right. I mean, they're just like, here, sign your name, you know, fill out what happened to you and we're going to mail it off. So it seems as though they were saying, you know, we're going to get this flat cut of some people are saying 20%, 25%, 30%, and then we'll represent you all the way through that. But it kind of seems like, particularly this big dispute, you know, because they're saying, oh, sign with me. Tickton has to say, well, maybe you can go with McCluskey if you want. The thing I'd say about Tickton is he's said very explicitly, he said, wow, did you get the

email from McCluskey? You know, he doesn't even bother his fellow's name right. And he says, he says, I can't believe this guy essentially. He says, look, when the going got tough, you know, when we January 6th gang, we thought we'd never get our reparations. You know, McCluskey, he bailed on you, but I always stood strong. And so, you know, this is the big fight. But as we discussed, a lot of these people are saying, I don't need a lawyer. Why am I going to give any of these people a cut? Yeah, that might be, that might not be smart.

I don't know. I think these people might be underestimating just how important it is still going to be to have somebody on the inside with this Trump commission of goodies dispensers in order to get, in order to get yours. We'll see how that all goes. The thing that's really coming home to me, talking all this through with you, is just how much of a Wild West open season sort of situation this fund at least looks like it's going to be. And it seems like the January 6 defendants sort of feel that way too in the sense that like a lot of these previous Justice Department settlements that were sort of dispersed from this same fund. It's pretty clear who the money is going to, how much is going out because it's the people who've been suing at some class action group that's been suing the government. There's some, you know, adversarial. process between them and the government's lawyers where they hash out a settlement deal over a long period of time. Some judge blesses it. And then it's, okay, it's this amount of money distributed between this many plaintiffs or members of the class or what have you. And this is just so far the

opposite. These guys were not part of this lawsuit to begin with. The amount of money seems to have just been like grabbed out of a hat because it's a patriotic number, $1.776 billion. And it's a completely open-ended group of potential beneficiaries. Just anybody who has some plausible claims, that they can make to this commission that they were you know had the government weaponized against them by the by the justice department i assume you know all of this infighting aside the the baseline sort of facebook vibe right now is just sort of like jubilation is that fair to say or is is the infighting already kind of like poisoning that to a degree well you know look this is a group of very fractious people these are people who i have always tried to find a way and

you know there's so many stories and kind of like elevate there was a point where like someone took over like an old folks home like this giant old folks home in virginia they were going to turn it into like the january sixth compound especially once the reparations money came in i mean there's all these crazy stories that have emerged from that world and these people like they often hate each other i mean there are figures there are like it's a wide variety of people right i mean these are some are like suburban maga people who kind of wandered in some are like cute crazy qunan on people some are people like jake lang this kind of anti-muslim white activist is this guy's burning korans all over the place and attacking jewish people you know criticizing them. So a lot of these people don't like each other to begin with. And so there is this sense of like, how's the money going to be doled out? I mean, that's going to be decided by, you know, I hate to say it, that there's like, I guess it's going to go forward. It's going to be a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general, one of which

is in consultation with Congress. It seems kind of like a pointless compromise. Trump can fire any of them for any reason at any time. So it seems like, you know, how is it going to happen? I could see, I mean, you can think about people like Peter Nibor. Barros, Steve Bannon, other people, Carter Page, all these characters who have faced prosecution. You could imagine just like, are they going to be like, well, we like you, Steve Bannon. You know, you get 100 million.

But I've never heard of you, January 6th guy. Let's give you 50K, you know. And I mean, I think that's very conceivable. Are people, but I guess to get back to my point, there's a lot of like bad blood because, you know, some people took guilty pleas. Some people fought the charges. And so they have additional legal bills. Some people cooperated with prosecutors.

Are they going to get them? I mean, supposedly the deep state. betrayed the MAGA movement. Yeah. Like, are they going to get a million dollars? You know, and I think there's, it is, look, it's 1.7 billion. When we, when we held firm, when we stuck to our guns and supported the president, come on.

Like that, yeah, I'd be mad too. And then, you know, some of these people are supposedly ancient provocateurs. I mean, they believe that, you know, some of these people were like, you know, working for the deep state the whole time. So, you know, 1.76 billion is obviously a lot of money. But I think people have done the math and they've said, well, let's say there's like 1,500 January 6 people, you know, potentially and, and, you know, who else is getting in. suddenly my my slice of this pie is rapidly shrinking.

I mean, a cool million just for just for showing up one day and wandering into the Capitol. That's the other good thing about this. I mean, like I've heard so many arguments over the years from, you know, these ridiculous lawmakers or whatever. Like the DOJ arrested grandmas just for walking past a rope line, you know? Like, I mean, maybe I'm curious whether grandma who walked past a rope line and in theory her prosecution was more unjust, should get more or less than someone who, you know, stole Nancy Pelosi's lectern or something like that. Like, well, you committed sedition and you had this militia group that you went in with, right? Is it a little more fair to prosecute you, you know?

Or were you really showing up for the president in the way some grandma just wandered in off the street? And, you know, why should, why should she get, you know, her faith was not as was, didn't burn as brightly as mine did. I, I, like, kicked in, I don't know, Hakeem, Jeffrey's, like, front door of his office or something like that, right? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think a lot still remains to be seen. And again, these people shouldn't be getting a million. We have to keep this in mind. We can talk about the intricacies. They should like have to pay a million dollars or something. I mean, these guys did something really bad. And now the fight is over like, well, how richly will they be compensated? Yeah. I mean, it is just, I've done a couple. This is like my third video touching on this topic already the last couple days. It's astonishing. It's astounding. I still can't really get my mind around it. Okay, we can probably leave it there. I guess my last word would be to the January 6th defendants. out there, you know, have a heart. Cut my boy, Mark McCloskey back in on deal. He worked pretty hard for you for a while. My guy, he needs a new, he needs a new pink polo. He needs a new AR-15. He needs to buy a couple pairs of shoes. You know, have a heart. Have a heart. Let him back. Let him back in there to suckle off the teat of this reparations fund. My God, this whole thing sucks.

It is insane. It really does. It really does. Do you have anything else, Will, before we let you go? No, I'm just glad to have you here with me as we try to muddle through this exciting news slash fun. Better together. Yeah. Well, we're going to keep covering it. Thanks, Will, for coming on. I mean, I will say, I have had basically no fun reading any content around this, just because it sucks so much. And your false flagged newsletter was the first thing that gave me a little bit of a funny side to all this. So I am constantly appreciative to you for that part of it. And I'll say thanks to you. And I'll say thanks to all the people out there watching and following along. Hopefully you got a little bit of a kick out of this part. They're not necessarily.

happy either, I guess, is the bottom line. They remain trapped in their own vices and their own and frauds and all these sorts of things, even as this money rains down from the government upon them. So we'll leave it there. We'll keep following it along. Thanks for watching. Hope you'll subscribe to the bulwark.com and subscribe to Will's excellent false flag newsletter for so much more bullshit like this. I mean, it's just, it's constant. It's insane, the stuff he digs up. Thanks, and we'll see you all next time.