Days before a judge was expected to throw out his mad lawsuit, Donald Trump decided to settle out of court with himself and create a ‘slush fund’ that has been branded “worse than Watergate”.
Donald Trump is setting up a billion dollar “slush fund” to hand cash to his allies and people who tried to overthrow the government and keep him in power. And American taxpayers are going to fund it whether they like it or not.
Earlier this year, Donald Trump sued the IRS – that’s the US equivalent of HMRC – over the unauthorised release of his tax records during his first term in office. The whistleblower who leaked them is currently serving 5 years in prison – but that’s not enough for Trump.
No, he sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak. And that’s surprising for two reasons: One, because it’s a non-serious, Dr Evil amount of money – way more than their operating budget. The other because as President, Donald Trump is in charge of the IRS, and the Justice Department who represent them. He is literally on both sides of the case.
The judge in the case noticed this, and gave them until this week to come up with an explanation for how they’re actually in opposition. So with just days to go before the judge threw the case out of court for being ridiculous, they decided to …settle out of court. That’s right. Donald Trump, and a government department controlled by Donald Trump, have settled out of court. For $1.7 billion. Now, he’s previously argued he isn’t siphoning money out of the US treasury and picking the pockets of hard working Americans to enrich himself, because he’d give the money to charity.
Which doesn’t actually make it a lot better. And in any case, he isn’t doing that any more. Now the plan is to create a one point seven billion dollar fund to pay out compensation to people who Trump thinks were wronged by the justice department during and after his first term. That includes people who were convicted of crimes related to the January 6th insurrection – including people who violently assaulted police officers – and were pardoned by Trump on his first day back in office. And if you think that’s bad – you might want to sit down while I explain how the fund is going to be operated.
So, Payouts will be decided by a board of six people, five of whom will be appointed by the Attorney General – that’s currently a guy called Todd Blanche. He used to be Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. So the board will effectively be selected by Donald Trump. A sixth member will be chosen “in consultation” with congressional leadership. But the President can remove any member for any reason at any time, so good luck with that one. There’s no requirement for the board to be subject to any oversight relating to the payouts, or to publish who got paid and how much.
The House Judiciary Committee have already called it “pure fraud and highway robbery”, arguing “No one can be both plaintiff and defendant in the same case.”
Donald Sherman, the president of government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it was “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.” And MS Now’s Ari Melber said it was “worse than Watergate.”
To put the scale of this into perspective – for a minute, cast your minds back to January, when a fraud case about people siphoning taxpayers money out of social services funds prompted a violent invasion of Minnesota by ICE agents leading to the deaths of two innocent American citizens – and also YouTubers getting millions of views by harassing children’s centres and demanding they “show us where the kids are”. The amount of fraud identified in that case? About $1.1 billion. Trump’s “slush fund” is going to be $1.776 billion.
And even that figure is a dogwhistle that tells you what he’s really doing here. 1776 was the year of the American revolution. This is Trump telling the January 6’ers – the people who battered police officers with sticks while trying to overturn the result of a legitimate election – that they are patriots. This is Trump telling people “if you commit crimes for me, you will not only not face punishment, you will be rewarded.” And if you, like me, believe Trump has no intention of leaving the White House at the end of his term – this doesn’t just look like corruption, it could be something far, far worse.