His reported financial slush fund to reward cronies and convicted criminals is as corrupt as it gets. The recent deal between Trump and himself (yes, this is not a typo) loots the U.S. Treasury of nearly $2 billion taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of individuals who assaulted police on Jan. 6, 2021, pay off members of Congress who claim they were wrongfully investigated, and disperse money to militia groups to arm themselves for future violence.
Trump’s Justice Department has labeled this scheme “The Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The fund plans to award compensation to victims of the previous administration’s alleged weaponization and lawfare. The goofy theory is that Trump, his family, and countless America First Patriots “were illegally targeted by the Democrat-led law enforcement agencies” and need to be compensated for their suffering.
The fund is exactly $1,776 billion. That’s the neat patriotic touch. Indeed, the January 6th insurrectionists yelled “Today is 1776” and critics suspect that the motive for this unprecedented compensation scheme is to finance the January 6th insurrectionists and get them armed and stoked for further violence. The money comes from the Treasury Department’s “Judgment Fund,” an allocation of taxpayer revenue from which the Justice Department typically withdraws money to settle routine cases that it litigates.
The media has repeatedly characterized the creation of this fund as a “settlement” of a lawsuit by Trump and his family against the IRS for leaking their tax returns, as well as the tax returns of thousands of others. But this is not a settlement of an actual case or controversy. It’s simply an agreement between Trump and one of Trump’s federal agencies, the IRS, negotiated by two of Trump’s handpicked lawyers who run the Justice Department and control federal money. By now all America probably knows that the Justice Department is under Trump his personal lawyer, not the Nation’s lawyer.
For a legal settlement you need a legal case or controversy between adverse parties. But Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS is in fact Trump suing his own government. Really, it’s Trump suing himself. And as the Supreme Court observed in the leading case of Muskrat v. United States (1911), the Constitution’s definition of a case or controversy requires “actual controversies arising between adverse litigants.” In Muskrat, as the Court observed, government “had no interest adverse to the claimant” and therefore there was no proper case to adjudicate, or settlement that could properly be reached. And if there’s no case, there’s nothing to settle.
In fact, the federal district judge overseeing the matter, Kathleen Williams, noted that Trump’s agreeing to drop his lawsuit and replace it with his new funding scheme does not even mention the word settlement, and so, to Judge Williams, “there is no settlement of record.” Indeed, career lawyers in the IRS believed Trump’s lawsuit was imperfectly brought and wanted to fight it. And the IRS general counsel resigned hours after the funding scheme was announced.
And lest there is any doubt, there is absolutely no precedent in American history for creating a specialized fund for hypothetical victims who have never sued the government, ever thought of suing the government, and are not even suing the government, but under Trump’s plan will argue they were victims of government wrongdoing and reap a financial windfall paid in full by American taxpayers.
Who gets to decide who gets the money from the fund? Trump, and the flunkies he appoints to manage the fund. Who gets the money? It could be almost anybody, but one can make some educated guesses. Did Congress authorize this financial scam? No. Can the January 6th insurrectionists who destroyed the Capital, threatened to hang Vice President Pence, injured police, and were all pardoned by Trump, now reap millions from this scam? Absolutely. Can Trump and his family dip into then fund? It’s possible. And in a stunning addendum issued shortly after the deal was announced, the Justice Department declared that the IRS would be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing unpaid tax claims against Trump, members of his family or his businesses that arose before the settlement was reached.
Critics, including many Republicans, have decried the scam as “illegal,” “corrupt,” “obscene,” “outrageous,” and “self-dealing.” Even Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney and now acting Attorney General who negotiated the deal, called the payoff “unusual.” And interestingly, the Department of Justice neither fought Trump’s IRS lawsuit nor entered an appearance in court. And since Blanche defended Trump in two cases resolved by the IRS agreement – Trump’s claim for injuries he sustained from allegations of Russian interference in his 2016 election campaign and the government’s 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate and his retention of classified documents – Blanche has a clearly ethical conflict of interest to appear on Trump’s behalf.
Moreover, the lawyer representing the United States in this so-called agreement also has a conflict of interest. He is Stanley Woodward, the number three official in the Justice Department who previously represented several Trump cronies accused of committing crimes, including Kash Patel, Peter Navarro, and several of the January 6th defendants.
As Senator Patty Murray observed: “What is happening here is you write the check, Trump and his cronies cash it, and American taxpayers who are already being whacked with high prices are going to foot the bill.”
Would January 6th rioters get compensated? When Blanche was questioned by the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee, he equivocated about whether the government would pay money to the January 6th rioters. When he was informed that one of the rioters who had subsequently been charged with molesting two young children tried to buy their silence by promising them funds he claimed he would receive from Trump, Blanche became irate and accused the questioner of lying.
But is wasn’t a lie. In fact, Andrew Johnson, one of the January 6th insurrectionists who was pardoned by Trump was recently convicted of sexually abusing two twelve-year-old boys and then trying to buy their silence by claiming he expected millions of dollars of restitution money from Trump.
It seems almost banal to describe the magnitude of this departure by Trump from laws and norms; there are too many examples. Recall Trump’s rallying cry when he incited the MAGA crowd that he would “drain the swamp” of corruptors, special interests, corporate lobbyists, and phony politicians?
Now, having already coopted the Supreme Court and effectively euthanized Congress, Trump now controls every branch of government, and can sink into his own swamp.
Given the large number of Republicans who have expressed outrage at Trump’s new slush fund, and with Trump’s approval dropping every day (today at 34 precent), the big question is whether his erstwhile supporters will support a loser.
