After the Trump administration unveiled an unprecedented $1.776 billion fund made up entirely of taxpayer money that is expected to benefit the president’s allies with no meaningful oversight, a great many Democrats, legal experts and even some Republicans agreed that Team Trump has created a corrupt and legally dubious “slush fund.”
Sen. Ed Markey, however, went further than most. The Massachusetts Democrat described the developments as an impeachable offense. From the senator’s online statement:
Trump’s “weaponization fund” … is his latest impeachable offense: using the machinery of government and billions in taxpayer dollars to reward allies, pay off insurrectionists, and shield himself, his family, and associates from accountability. This is exactly the kind of corruption and abuse of public trust the Framers feared most. Impeach now.
At the outset, it’s worth acknowledging basic political realities: There’s a Republican-led Congress, which remains loyal to the Republican White House, so it’s simply unrealistic to think Donald Trump will face a serious impeachment push anytime soon.
But Markey didn’t suggest otherwise. Rather, he simply made the point that the underlying misconduct is itself the kind of abuse that warrants impeachment, whether such action is imminent or not.
What’s more, the senator’s case is hardly unreasonable. Not only is the scheme legally dubious, as a lawsuit filed Wednesday hopes to prove, but the editorial board of The New York Times also made a compelling case that the entire gambit is itself “threatening to constitutional order.” The board added, “It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself.”
Complicating matters, the president and his team aren’t even operating under their own rules. The Times separately reported:
On Pam Bondi’s first day as attorney general in February 2025, she signed a directive that appeared to prohibit an arrangement like the $1.8 billion fund. The memo, titled “Reinstating the Prohibitions on Improper Third Party Settlements,” revived a Justice Department policy that the Trump administration adopted in 2017 and the Biden administration subsequently canceled.
The memo said that except in “limited circumstances,” the department should not use settlements “to require payments to nongovernmental, third-party organizations that were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits.” The new fund, however, appears to be structured to steer a large pot of money to third-party claimants, most of whom have not filed suits and may never file suits now that there is a fund.
We’re just at the start of this scandal, and there’s no reason to believe Markey will be alone in making the case for impeachment. Watch this space.
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