Of all of Trump’s many corruptions, among the most brazen is his suit against the IRS claiming personal damages because an IRS contractor leaked his tax returns during his first term. This amounts to Trump just reaching into the Treasury and helping himself to the People’s money, because he can. And considering that presidents since Richard Nixon have made their current tax returns public, it seems to me that claiming he was “damaged” by the leak amounts to an admission of guilt, that there is something in the returns that would damage him if it became public. But let’s go on.
The original claim was for $10 billion. Then late last week ABC News reported that Trump had decided to settle with Trump for $1.7 billion — $1,776,000,000 to be exact. And this money wouldn’t go into Trump’s pocket, according to Trump. Trump’s Justice Department would set up a slush fund managed by Trump appointees who can be fired by him at will, and this slush fund would be used to pay off people Trump wants to reward for doing him favors. In particular, he wants to be able to compensate people who face legal consequences for breaking the law in his behalf. Or, as David Kurtz puts it, “to pay out ‘damages’ to his allies who purport to be victims of the Deep State, including the Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants.” This is just the thing to possibly compensate a volunteer paramilitary of Brownshirts set on bullying whomever Trump wants bullied.
I also like the way the New York Times puts it:
The Justice Department said that it had created a $1.8 billion fund that could compensate supporters of President Trump who contend they were mistreated by Democratic administrations. The announcement came as part of a settlement with President Trump of his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S.
The new “settlement” was filed in advance of a court deadline. The judge hearing the original suit wanted the “defendants” to explain how they are not just an extension of Trump. No responses had been filed yet. And here’s a twist that I just learned about this morning, Again, David Kurtz at TPM:
Trump’s latest filing is a notice of dismissal with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be refiled, but most importantly it contends that the right to dismiss the case is not subject to judicial review under the procedural rules since neither the IRS nor the Treasury Department had yet filed an answer or other responsive motion to the lawsuit.
“Accordingly, voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) is available as of right, and requires neither leave of Court nor the consent of any party,” Trump’s lawyers argue. They go farther in a footnote, in telling the judge that they are filing a notice of dismissal, not a motion to dismiss, because she has no say in the matter under appeal court precedent: “dismissal is self-executing, terminates the action upon filing, and divests the district court of jurisdiction.”
The bulk of the notice is dedicated to telling Judge Williams to back off: “Upon the filing of this Notice, no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any ‘subsequent order purporting to dismiss ‘all claims’ . . . [would be] a nullity,’” it contends, citing case law.
I wondered last week if a court would have to sign off on Trump’s settlement with Trump, and I couldn’t find an answer. So the answer seems to be, I guess not.
And today the DoJ announced the establishment of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Yet this isn’t over. Today House Democrats filed an amicus brief with the original judge, asking her to put a stop to this blatant exercise in self-dealing. Rep. Jamie Raskin has been arguing that the creation of the slush fund is unconstitutional, since only Congress can appropriate funds to be used by government (in this case, the DoJ). So there may be a court challenge after all, although who knows how that will turn out.
And if you (like me) are struggling to remember what was learned from Trump’s tax returns, see Key takeaways from six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from CNN and 18 Revelations From a Trove of Trump Tax Records from the New York Times.
I believe that if this is to be a true "settlement offer," it must go through the courts. Since a judge didn't order this, and there's no statutory basis to set up the fund, there's a negative basis for the fund: giving away taxpayer money is "theft" if it's not yours, or you're not following the law. The DoJ should have no right to set this up, without a judge approving the settlement. Trump is insisting that the judge has no right to do anything, because he dismissed the suit.
The judge should rule that the case is dismissed, with prejudice, but there's no legal basis for the fund and orders all actions related to creation of the fund to stop.
I'm not a lawyer, but Trump's basis for saying the judge has no authority is, the case was dismissed, ending the case. Since no judge allowed the case to be dismissed, because of the agreement, the judge ought to be able to rule that the fund has no legal basis.
And also, agree with Trump, "yeah, you dismissed with prejudice all right. But a judge still has to authorize an agreement like this, and now, they can't – the case is closed, as you yourself pointed out in your prior filing, so, you're SOL."
They should probably use the legal term for SOL, to avoid scarring the legal eyes of the delicate courtroom snowflakes, but, other than that, that strikes me as what justice should bring about – no case, no fund. But again, not a lawyer, not sure what the judge can or can't do.
I'm no lawyer, but if Trump, as President, can sue himself for something that happened while he was not a president, and personally reap monetary gain, then he should be able to be held liable, civilly and criminally, as President, for things he may have done while not in office, id still covered by the statute of limitations. If a president can't be sued or held liable, as President, then a person who is president shouldn't be able to do sue himself as President.
Yet the Supreme "court" sits by, mute, as this obvious (to me) flaw is just laid out there.
Once a democrat is in office they'll pretend to make up for it, maybe even implement some "clarification" designed to prevent that democrat from getting away with the same thing, or most likely even less, as "proof" that our institutions of justice still work, morality, etc. But they've already shown that any semblance of morality has been replaced with extreme partisan ship and a lust for power, and will be the ONLY reason they do something like that, if they do.
I'm no lawyer, but if Trump, as President, can sue himself for something that happened while he was not a president, and personally reap monetary gain, then he should be able to be held liable, civilly and criminally, as President, for things he may have done while not in office, id still covered by the statute of limitations. If a president can't be sued or held liable, as President, then a person who is president shouldn't be able to do sue himself as President.
Yet the Supreme "court" sits by, mute, as this obvious (to me) flaw is just laid out there.
Once a democrat is in office they'll pretend to make up for it, maybe even implement some "clarification" designed to prevent that democrat from getting away with the same thing, or most likely even less, as "proof" that our institutions of justice still work, morality, etc. But they've already shown that any semblance of morality has been replaced with extreme partisan ship and a lust for power, and will be the ONLY reason they do something like that, if they do.
I'm no lawyer, but if Trump, as President, can sue himself for something that happened while he was not a president, and personally reap monetary gain, then he should be able to be held liable, civilly and criminally, as President, for things he may have done while not in office, id still covered by the statute of limitations. If a president can't be sued or held liable, as President, then a person who is president shouldn't be able to do sue himself as President.
Yet the Supreme "court" sits by, mute, as this obvious (to me) flaw is just laid out there.
Once a democrat is in office they'll pretend to make up for it, maybe even implement some "clarification" designed to prevent that democrat from getting away with the same thing, or most likely even less, as "proof" that our institutions of justice still work, morality, etc. But they've already shown that any semblance of morality has been replaced with extreme partisan ship and a lust for power, and will be the ONLY reason they do something like that, if they do.
Maybe. I've also read that if the two parties in a civil suit come to an agreement outside the courthouse, and the plaintiff drops the suit, then the court doesn't have to be involved. But I'm not a lawyer, either. And that brings us back to the question of whether there really are two adversarial parties here, or whether there is just one party abusing a system he controls.
Agreed; part of this is going to come down to what laws can be applied, and whether they'll survive the SCOTUS-6.
You're right about civil cases involving private money; if you sued me, realized you were lawfully correct, but now felt awful, sure, we could settle for a dollar. But that's because it'd be my dollar – not the DoJ's. This isn't Trump's money, it's taxpayer money. That's where I think the judge might have leeway. if Congress appropriated "up to two billion dollars" for settlement money, Trump would be golden, but they didn't appropriate any money for this sort of settlement.
So the next thing is the federal judgment fund, but, here's where I assume you can't just agree to settle a suit with your good buddy and give them a pile of government money… not without court oversight and approval. I mean, I could be wrong, of course, and no one has ever been so transparently corrupt in the past, because everyone else had some ethics, and a sense of shame. I'd expect you can't have the executive unilaterally police a settlement to itself, nor even to private citizen… but eventually, we may learn the opinion of the Scotus-6
Will the SCOTUS6 make a decision that invalidates the power of a judge to protect the judicial process? It's one thing to transfer power from the legislature to the executive but they'd be invalidating to power of a judge to call out a raid of the Treasury by the president.
Looks like funding for storm troopers to me. Is there an election he wants to steal coming up or what?
Looks like funding for storm troopers to me. Is there an election he wants to steal coming up or what?
I'm not a lawyer either, but here's how I see it: Who is he suing for alleged harm caused by some party's leaking of his tax return? It wasn't the "government" generally that leaked it, it was a person serving in the Biden Administration. So he is the plaintiff in a suit which was erroneously filed against the Trump Administration. The court should throw the suit out as simply being an invalid suit. A private person can sue the government or a government agency for harm resulting from a government action. The leaking of his tax records was not a government action. No government official decided that the IRS would "release" the tax records to the public as an IRS action. An individual within the IRS did that either illegally or by mistake.
So who should the parties be? Citizen Trump is the plaintiff. Who is the defendant? I say that it cannot be Trump. The leaker could be the defendant. The Biden Administration could be the defendant. But Trump cannot be the defendant. The suit was filed in a court. If that court can accept that Trump is the defendant then the judge can immediately dismiss the charges due to the fact that the defendant decided to make the tax records public ipso facto by leaking them. That means that Trump decided to release the records, and therefor his case is baseless. Now even Trump would say that of course he never approved the release of the records. That means he cannot be the defendant. He cannot negotiate as the defendant. So he cannot settle.
Furthermore, if the court were to accept that the suit is valid, then the court should assign a public defender who is not a part of the current DOJ to avoid the obvious conflict of interest. That public defender, acting on behalf of the people's government, could refuse any settlement and simply present the case for the defense and let the normal trial process determine liability and judgment.
Further, if there is an award to the plaintiff either by judgment or by settlement (if my ideas above don't fly completely) such award cannot include the establishment of a government fund directed to paying "damages" to people who were convicted by a fair due process. To allow that as a judgment or settlement to a private person plaintiff would be unconstitutional, because the only party that has the power to do that kind of thing is the Article I Congress. A private citizen cannot circumvent that by wrapping it in the false clothing of a "settlement".
Just so you know, that's one reason Trump is rushing the settlement. The judge was about to be briefed about whether the suit can continue, because there weren't two adversarial parties. Our courts have some invisible rules that most people don't hear about. One is "standing," you can only sue if you're harmed, directly. Another is, courts are adversarial; you can't be a judge in your own case, and you can’t be both sides of a controversy. That's the one Trump was about to run up against.
That's why they want to have a settlement, without judicial oversight. A judge was (or maybe "is") about to toss the case as non-adversarial, so, they're trying to say "we settled, and dismissed, the case, the judge has no right to say anything further!"
While two parties can always settle and scuttle a case for any reason, or no reason, they can only do that when all the property and other considerations trading hands are private. Trump is settling a lawsuit with Trump for a lot of money that isn't his – that's where the judge will have authority, if the judge does, in fact, have authority.
In the end, if the Supreme Court sides with Trump, the rest doesn't matter. Roberts has decided that whatever his majority rules is the "correct" decision, regardless of facts, law, precedent, forgetting to say "Mother May I?", etc.. This is precisely the kind of legislating from the bench Republicans said they hated, but it turns out, they just hated losing court cases, and they hated justice, when justice called for them to lose court cases.
I don't think so. I keep reading the person who leaked the returns was a "contractor," meaning he wasn't a regular government employee and certainly didn't have an appointed position in the Biden Administration. I think Trump's beef was with the IRS for not keeping his information secure. Of course, there's more profit in suing the government. I doubt said contractor was worth $10 billion.
It's illegal, but who has 'grounds' to intervene? The DOJ is supposed to be the people's law firm. They are not opposing the suit by settling a ridiculous suit for a ridiculous amount.
The whole thing should underline how criminal this administration is. The mind boggles.
Yes, absolutely. The current US regime is dedicated to undermining the rule of law. This is not conservative in any sense (common language, political thought left/right, R vs D). It is simply the same as the thinking of a 10 year old boy who doesn't like anyone telling him what he can or can't do. The current R party is the party of arrested development.
The Moron endorsed Paxton for Senate in TX over the incumbent, Corynyn. This pits the Democrat, Talico, who polls better against Paxton than he does against Cornyn. I'm not calling any race this far put, but Trump put the Senate in play. BTW, I remind you that gerrymandering does not affect Senate races.
OT, saw a Chinese cartoon that summarized 45's recent meeting. Trump is depicted as a floating hot air balloon, looking ridiculous, with Xi Jinping calmly standing nearby, holding a pin a few inches from the balloon.
The tent gets smaller as the cult tightens like a vise demanding ever increasing levels of boot licking and butt kissing. Sold out to a level beyond addiction. The only life left is the one leader dictates for them. The last doors are closing as exit signs vanish.
Paxton gets the nod to squeeze in. No room left for ethical baggage. He'll fit.
My opinion, fwiw: there's going to be so much outrage over this completely obvious grift, that it's not going to happen. Even your average ex-MAGA can see what this is about. It's a grift too far, and is going to blow up in Trump's face.
I'm seeing that Capitol cops who were assaulted by the Jan 6 rioters are suing to block this. I don't know if they have standing, but this is just the tip of the pushback, and it's just getting started.
Agree completely regarding the shameless obvious grift and lawlessness. But I'd like to add something that doesn't negate that evaluation. Watching teevee this mid-day I noticed the intensity of coverage of the slush fund. And an interesting thought popped into my head uninvited: Ever since the war and the weekly outrages and now the payoff fund for insurrectionists, and today's DOJ indictment of Rowell Kasstrow, for 1996 crimes (30 years ago!), we're not talking about the Eps-teen files. And frankly, I don't think the reason they are hiding those files is because of sex-trafficking alone. The bigger issue is that (I think) those files will paint a very damning picture of the ruling class in the late twentieth – early twenty-first century. A combination of thievery, bigotry, lawlessness, brutality, greed, lust, cruelt and addiction to power that will blow the roof off the current administration.
They can't hide Epstein forever. It is so big, so awful, and international. Once the Democrats get in this fall, it's going to blow wide open.
The Grift Too Far… a thrilling tale of a political party which has outrun their deny lines.
PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom— and of whom only—it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary)