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Trump gets his slush fund
How Trump sued himself and settled for $1.8 billion, briefly explained.
Cameron Peters is a staff editor at Vox.
Welcome to The Logoff: Last week, we wrote about President Donald Trump’s plan to create a nearly $2 billion slush fund using taxpayer money. Today, he made it happen.
What’s the latest? On Monday, the Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of a settlement with Trump, who previously sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns.
The fund is intended to compensate “victims of lawfare and weaponization,” a group that could include people prosecuted in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.
According to the DOJ, “the Fund will consist of five members appointed by” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is also Trump’s former personal lawyer. Trump will be able to dismiss any of those five members at will.
What else did the government agree to? The DOJ said in a press release that, in addition to ending his IRS suit, Trump would drop two administrative claims demanding $230 million from the government over the 2016 investigation into his presidential campaign and the later FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago property.
What else Trump gets out of the agreement is unclear, but there’s almost certainly more — the DOJ website stresses that the new “Fund” is only “a part of the settlement agreement.”
What’s the context? Trump and his allies have already profited massively off his second term, but his administration’s corruption is reaching new heights. Another example from this week: his very active interest in stock trading.
What’s the big picture? As Tad DeHaven wrote for Vox earlier this year, Trump has long pushed “to create discretionary pools of money and leverage points of control that can be used to reward, punish, and command, all while trying to dodge legal and constitutional constraints.”
This fund is an expression of that impulse: a vast trove of taxpayer money he can dole out to allies as he sees fit, overseen by an (acting) attorney general personally loyal to him.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
One of the goals of this newsletter is to be respectful of your time and brain space when it feels like there’s too much news to keep track of. Hopefully we’re succeeding at that — but if you still feel like there aren’t enough hours in a day, you can turn to my colleague Bryan Walsh, who wrote about how to excavate free time you might not even realize you had. (As always, it’s a gift link.)
Have a good evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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