Trump just pulled of his biggest heist of taxpayer money by settling a bogus lawsuit. He had sued the Treasury Department/IRS for the unauthorized release of his tax return, then agreed to settle if the Department of Justice created a fund to compensate anyone who had been injured by the “weaponization” of the law under President Biden.
Trump was projecting. Biden did not “weaponize” the Department of Justice. Trump did, directing his Attorney General to prosecute his political enemies, like Leticia James, James Comey, and John Brennan.
If anything, Merrick Garland was too timid in prosecuting the insurrectionists who tried to overturn the 2020 election and far too slow to appoint Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, whose investigation ran out of time.
Andrew Egger of The Bulwark describes the details of Trump’s political slush fund.
Basically, he has full control of the money. And he dies not have to disclose the recipients.
Egger wrote:
When I wrote Friday about the news that Donald Trump was about to drop his $10 billion IRS lawsuit in exchange for the creation of a $1.776 billion taxpayer-cash slush fund for his allies who claim the Biden administration “weaponized” the law against them, I noted that nothing was yet set in stone. At that moment, it still seemed possible that this obscene settlement—Trump’s biggest, most lawless, most brazen theft of taxpayer cash yet—might yet give them cold feet.
But no: Yesterday, they made the thing official. In fact, it’s somehow even worse than advertised.
It’s impossible to overstate this basic fact: Everything about the settlement fund, from the circumstances of its creation to the claims it makes about its own enforcement, is deliberately structured to short-circuit all outside accountability, government oversight, or judicial review. As I wrote Friday, there was a reason Trump’s guys (who happened to be both the plaintiffs and the defendants in the case) were hustling to reach the settlement quickly: The judge in the IRS case had been signaling her suspicion that Trump and his government were not actually on opposite sides of the claim, suggesting she was considering throwing out the case altogether. If they wanted to carry out the heist, time was of the essence.
The Justice Department’s enforcement order, released yesterday, and the settlement terms released last night carry on in this dubious fashion. According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the United States loses custody and control of the $1.776 billion the minute it hits the settlement account created for the purpose: “Once the funds are deposited into the Designated Account,” he wrote in the order, “the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.”
Meanwhile, the terms of the settlement fund make clear that the money’s disbursement—which, again, Trump’s United States government is trying to wash its hands of any liability for—will be a complete black box. “The Anti-Weaponization Fund shall have the power to determine its own procedures for submitting, receiving, processing, and granting or denying claims,” the settlement reads. “The Anti-Weaponization Fund may make those procedures public in whole or in part, at its discretion.”
Not only can the fund’s members keep secret how they’re making disbursement decisions, they can also keep a lid on who’s getting paid. The requirements for this are astonishingly open-ended: “To be eligible for relief,” the settlement states, a claimant must merely “assert at least one legal claim stating that the claimant was a victim of Lawfare and/or Weaponization.” Meanwhile, the only person the fund’s administrations will be required to brief on who got how much money is the attorney general—in a “confidential written report,” and even then only quarterly.
The cherry on top of this shit settlement sundae is this claim: “Because the claims process is voluntary, there shall be no appeal, arbitration, or judicial review of claims, offers, or other determinations made by the Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which is stated to be “enforceable and challengeable solely by Plaintiffs, Defendants, and the United States”—in other words, by Trump, Trump, and Trump.
The first opportunity to head off this disaster seems already to have passed. Nearly a hundred Democratic lawmakers signed an amicus brief filed in court Monday urging the judge not to dismiss the case as the parties requested, but to insist on weighing in on the terms of the settlement. But Judge Kathleen Williams ruled in a brief order yesterday that she lacked the power to do this—the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, she said, so she had no authority to adjudicate it.
Once again, then, Trump’s aptitude for unprecedented shamelessness seems to have exposed yet another piece of our government that ultimately runs on the honor system: If a corrupt president wants to dip into the Treasury for literally any purpose whatsoever, all he has to do is sue the government, then settle with himself outside of court to create a payout fund for whatever purpose he might desire.
“It is Congress who appropriates money and it is the executive who spends it,” Matt Platkin, the former attorney general of New Jersey who is representing the Democratic lawmakers in the suit, told The Bulwark yesterday. “Put aside all of the potential corruption with this case—if the president can just sue himself and then settle with himself . . . and then spend huge amounts of money outside of that appropriations process, why would any president ever go to Congress for money ever again?”
It’s a great point—and one that reminds us that, ultimately, the responsibility for reining in this rampaging president falls not with the courts, but with Congress. It is not just the courts but Congress as well that Trump is cutting out of the loop with his obscene and indefensible settlement. Even here, Trump requires at least the legislature’s tacit permission to spend this money: They could pass a bill today to block a penny of that money from going out the door. Because of the funhouse-mirror world we live in and the villainous, power-hungry president we have, that bill would need to have the supermajority support required to overcome a presidential veto, but they do still have the power, if only they were to choose to exercise it.
But that funhouse-mirror reality is enough to prove on its own that just blocking the money wouldn’t go far enough. Trump is not merely asserting the power to jailbreak $1.8 billion from the Treasury to parcel out to his fans and allies. He is trying to create an upside-down new status quo where his single say-so is enough to overturn the will of two thirds of Congress minus one on all spending matters that really, really matter to him. It’s utterly un-American. It’s emperor stuff. If they had a shred of dignity left, they’d impeach the son of a bitch today.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This settlement is so brazen in its flaunting of personal power that one would get the impression that Trump believes himself invulnerable. What is there to like in this arrangement except the raw power it gives to the executive? Trump and Johnson clearly see the modern Trump Party (it can no longer call itself Republican) as unassailable.
There is little evidence to suggest that they are not correct. If they lose significantly in the midterms, they will declare an emergency based on fabrication. Short of a military mutiny, I see little opportunity to effect any change within this government. Of course, my pessimism is tempered with the recent experience of Orban, whose star fell dramatically in the recent election in Hungary.
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Trump has been relentless in self-aggrandizement ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he could not be prosecuted for any crimes he commits while in office.
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The only word appropriate to describe this debacle of honesty is. “disgusting” which also fits this administration and that also is “disgusting”!
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This plan just like vouchers. “Hand me the taxpayer’s money and trust me without any accountability.” Why would any sane person believe that the grifter in chief can be trusted? We know how this goes. Slush funds lead to waste, fraud and misuse of tax dollars.
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No doubt, all this is causing Nixon to roll over and do somersaults in his grave because he was alive at the wrong time, since now is the era when stacked courts and Congress support the notion that “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal…”
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But whatabout!
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How is this even remotely legal? A sitting president can now direct his former personal attorney whom he put in charge of the DOJ to give him a slush fund with taxpayer funds and, as a bonus, is barring audits of Trump and his family?
Although I can count on certain reporters to NYT-splain the both sides issues regarding this. Maybe Trump CAN just do this. Reporters just don’t have any idea. After all, if even one powerful Republican says it is okay, that can only be balanced by the biased Trump-hating people who say it is not okay. Who can really know? Certainly no NYT journalist whose over the top pride in their “unbiased” both sides equal reporting knows anything except what both sides tells them. And once they write their story, it’s on to the next one about Trump’s new plan for fighting inflation, or plan for world peace, or taking over Venezuela. Because, in the words of every NYT reporter asked about why they don’t cover Trump properly, “people already know” from their one or two stories, that Trump did this, (and mentioning it again might give the public the wrong impression that what happened is IMPORTANT.) What’s important (to NYT reporters) are stories about “her emails” and “Biden’s dementia” and “fiasco withdrawal in Afghanistan”, and that’s why the NYT wrote dozens of daily stories for months about those IMPORTANT events that readers must understand were bad and thre is no two sides about it.
But this? It’s just not something that the so-called liberal media of stenographers believe is important unless some Republican Senators start saying that it is. Then a reporter might write another story. But until then, it simply is just another of the one day stories about something Trump does that simply doesn’t warrant the concern that “her emails”. and “his dementia” warrant about Democrats.
I’d love to be wrong about this. But we’ve already forgotten half of the obviously improper things Trump has already done just this year because the media “moved on” immediately. We certainly haven’t forgotten “her emails” because the so-called liberal media covered it like it was of vital importance and NEVER “moved on” until after the election.
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