Best case, assuming you even get charged, your case gets picked up by the EFF, ACLU, IFJ, etc. You spend nothing, you win, and you get a lot of free publicity for your pen testing company.

Worst case, nobody comes to help you, you spend all of your money, still lose the case, end up in a shitty US prison, and get stabbed in the shower by some guy driven crazy by spending months in solitary.

Personally, I would not mess with security research on anything even distantly related to US Gov.