New Orleans Rumor has it that Trump is increasingly coming to recognize that the gale winds of opposition from all corners, including his own Republicans, have made the $1.8 billion slush fund created for his pleasure and distribution politically untenable. They may let it die a slow death thanks the federal judge who had overseen the case having reopened it which allows some time to pass, potentially pushing it off the front and every other page of the papers. This episode is historic in the annals of political greed and sycophancy, so even if and when it’s gone, it should never be forgotten.
A long piece in the Times cobbled together from various, largely anonymous, sources dissect the Trump administration enablers in this matter, so bears attention. We need to look at the facts, before they are obscured in back and forth and finger pointing to come.
Keep in mind that all of this was an effort to settle Trump frivolous lawsuit for $10 billion filed against the US Internal Revenue Service. His accusation was that the IRS allowed the release of his private tax returns, along with other rich people. It’s worth remembering that this was not a release from the IRS or its personnel. A contractor named Charles Littlejohn was the culprit here. For his actions, he was prosecuted by the Biden administration and sentenced to five years in prison for these deeds.
Somehow the heart of Trump’s claim was that the IRS had not done enough to stop Littlejohn, even though he is paying the price. Trump seems to have felt that he needed to get big money for his grievance. In fact, in defending the slush fund on almost $2 billion, he claimed he was already giving up “a lot,” thereby pretending he was “losing” $8 billion that he wanted. Breathtaking! The IRS and its lawyers, to their credit, treated the Trump claims as they would any other and submitted a 25-page defense to the Treasury Department, although it seems that memo never got over to the Justice Department.
A lot the Times inside report focuses on the problem identified by the judge “wondering whether there was actually a conflict to adjudicate, given that Trump was effectively on both sides of the suit.” The conclusions that seem unavoidable are more than simply the fact that the judge did her job early, middle, and late, including having forced a reopening of the case to investigate whether this “okey-doke” so-called settlement and Trump’s withdrawal were an attempt to deceive her. It also seems that when so many of Trump’s personal lawyers are now speckled through the Justice Department and have gone in and out of the administration already, but maintain their contacts, that the merits of the litigation pale compared to their aims to make the boss happy and enrich him one way or another. They seemed to have overlooked the obstacles and seen the prospects of a “global” settlement of these claims and others both on the Trump vengeance and grievance tour, but also his own enrichment. The details on closing existing audits, which involve one for a $100 million tax benefit he claimed on an old return, and future audits for Trump and his family, were not posted until a day later after the fund was released in an obscure and confusing way on the Justice website.
Nobody wants to own this mess now it seems. When asked about whether he had had a role in concocting this massive giveaway for Trump, the acting Attorney General, also a former Trump lawyer, who is now seeking the top job, simply answered, “nope.”
This thing has become toxic, but it also makes me wonder about how many other instances of self-dealing have happened in Trump’s second term that we don’t know about yet? There’s no way not to believe that the rot runs deep. The swamp wasn’t drained, despite Trump’s promise. It has been flooded!