The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to kill a lawsuit brought by people who were at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, arguing the case missed its filing window by years. It's the newest twist in a legal saga that has already produced mass pardons and a run of vacated convictions for Capitol rioters — including a Tuesday ruling that cleared the last standing Jan. 6 prosecution — and now turns former defendants into plaintiffs chasing money from the government they once stormed.
A Deadline the Government Says Was Missed by Years
In papers filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, government attorneys argued every claim in the suit should be thrown out because the plaintiffs waited too long to bring it. The Federal Tort Claims Act requires anyone suing the federal government for an injury to first file an administrative claim within two years of the harm. Since the plaintiffs date their injuries to Jan. 6, 2021, DOJ pegged the cutoff at Jan. 6, 2023 — yet, according to the government's filing, the earliest claim from any named plaintiff carries a July 29, 2025 date, roughly two and a half years past that mark. Government lawyers wrote that the plaintiffs knew who had injured them and how, but government lawyers wrote that they "chose to wait until well past the deadline to file the claims."
Timing wasn't DOJ's only objection. The filing also contends that plaintiffs never properly completed the administrative process required before suing — some forms were left partly blank, and others lacked signatures or supporting records the law demands.
What the Rioters Say Happened That Day
Led by named plaintiffs Patrick Sullivan, Marie Sullivan and Alan E. Fischer III, the class action was filed in Florida back in March on behalf of dozens of additional participants — roughly three dozen who'd already submitted claims, plus about a dozen more still waiting out the required six-month response period before they could join. The complaint accuses Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police officers of firing munitions and chemical agents into the crowd without separating people who were actively breaching barricades from bystanders further back. It also claims officers skipped the verbal warnings required under the District's First Amendment Assemblies Act before using force. The suit seeks compensatory damages and attorneys' fees, and the plaintiffs say they filed their paperwork properly and simply never got a response inside the six-month window the law gives the government before a case can head to court.
DOJ's Fallback: Send the Case to Washington
If the judge won't dismiss the suit entirely, government attorneys asked for a second option — moving the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the city where the riot itself took place.
The dismissal request landed a single day after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order formally rescinding the roughly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, money that had been proposed in May as part of resolving President Trump's settlement with the IRS over the leak of his tax records. Blanche's order stated that no board members were ever appointed and no money ever moved. Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis had refused to back Blanche's confirmation as permanent attorney general until they got a written, legally binding commitment that the fund was gone for good. Killing the fund, however, doesn't block rioters from pursuing money the ordinary way: ABC News noted nothing in Blanche's order stops payouts to Jan. 6 participants who go through standard legal claims — like the Florida lawsuit itself. President Trump said Sunday that defendants from that day "had their lives destroyed."
The White House's Hand in the Deal
CNN reported that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Director of Legislative Affairs James Braid were both "deeply involved" in hammering out the rescission, with Blanche coordinating closely with the White House and briefing top officials throughout the negotiations.
With the fund dispute resolved, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 on Tuesday to send Blanche's nomination to the full Senate, clearing the roadblock that had threatened to stall his path to running the department permanently. The Florida case, meanwhile, is still sitting in front of the district judge, who now has to decide whether to dismiss it outright, ship it to Washington, or let it move forward over the government's objections.
Whichever way the judge rules, it won't settle the bigger political question still hanging over the case — whether the administration eventually finds some other way to compensate Jan. 6 defendants outside a courtroom. Blanche's order shut down one specific mechanism for that, but it left the door open for individual rioters to keep pressing ordinary legal claims, the same route the Sullivan case is now testing, assuming it survives the timeliness fight the government has put front and center.
