During Donald Trump’s first term, a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn gained access to the president’s tax returns and shared the documents the Republican had been desperate to hide. Littlejohn was caught, charged, convicted and sent to prison.
Earlier this year, however, Trump decided the criminal penalty wasn’t enough. Indeed, the Republican filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the federal tax agency in February, setting up an unprecedented situation in which a president sought a massive payout from the same executive branch he leads.
Shortly after the president filed the radical (and by any fair measure, frivolous) lawsuit, he told reporters that he assumed “nobody would care” if he received a giant check from the government because he and his team were “thinking about doing something for charity.”
More than three months later, as settlement talks between the agency and the Republican’s lawyers continue, money for “charity” doesn’t appear to be the principal goal. ABC News reported:
President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.
The arrangement, ABC News noted, “would be an unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars with little oversight.”
The same report (which has not been independently verified by MS NOW) added that Trump wouldn’t personally receive any money from the arrangement but that (a) the deal would nevertheless create a pool of money for his team to use at its discretion; and (b) “entities associated with Trump” would not be “explicitly barred” under the deal from seeking funds.
While the structure of the proposed compensation fund is not yet clear, it would apparently resemble a victim compensation fund — despite the absence of any actual victims. Moreover, the suggestion that the Biden administration “weaponized” federal law enforcement is a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence.
The Justice Department and the IRS didn’t comment to ABC News, while a spokesperson for the president’s legal team issued a generic statement about holding “those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
Time will tell whether this scheme comes to fruition, but if the reporting is correct, it sets the stage for one of the most corrupt presidential arrangements in American history.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren characterized the purported deal on social media as an “insane level of corruption — even for Trump.” The Massachusetts Democrat said the agreement would create a “slush fund for Trump’s hand-picked stooges to hand money to January 6th insurrectionists and his political allies.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, issued a related statement, saying, “Donald Trump is orchestrating a $1,700,000,000 fraud on the American taxpayer to line the pockets of his MAGA political allies, another installment in his ongoing effort to turn the federal government into a personal cash machine for his unpopular extremist movement. This is a massive and unprecedented presidential plunder of the American people.”
Raskin’s statement went on, “The President has no authority to conjure up billion-dollar compensation schemes or raid the Judgment Fund which exists to settle valid lawsuits. Trump is systematically converting neutral government mechanisms into a presidential slush fund to build his army of political dependents. … This is a giant affront to the rule of law and a danger to the American system of justice.”
It’s easy to forget, but just two months into his second term, the president endorsed the idea of a possible “compensation fund” for rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol in his name. Trump didn’t elaborate on the details, but taken at face value, he appeared to describe what would effectively be financial rewards for the criminals he pardoned.
It wasn’t clear at the time where exactly he expected to get the money. Fourteen months later, the answer appears to be coming into focus: Trump would get the money from taxpayers, in the form of a settlement agreement that results in a giant pool of money his team could use to reward his allies. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post Democrats condemn ‘slush fund’ as Trump eyes possible settlement with the IRS appeared first on MS NOW.
