\n<\/p>\n
President Trump, flanked by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, speaks to the press after the shooting at White House Correspondents dinner on April 25.<\/span>Jose Luis Magana\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sen. Ron Wyden<\/span>, longtime Oregon Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Finance Commitee, has never been a fan of President Donald Trump. But I\u2019ve never seen him quite this<\/em> worked up.<\/p>\n The administration, Wyden declared in a statement on Friday, \u201cis dripping with corruption from top to bottom\u201d and is now plotting \u201camong the most corrupt acts in American political history.\u201d<\/p>\n What we are witnessing, he said, is nothing less \u201cthan a shakedown of the American people by a crook president and his crook lawyers\u2026no more valid than if he had sued the White House kitchen for serving him an undercooked steak. Between this and the ballroom and a thousand other acts of corruption, Trump is a parasite on the American republic.\u201d<\/p>\n In case you haven\u2019t been glued to the news, the saga that has Wyden so enraged kicked off in late January, just over a year into Trump\u2019s second term, when the president, along with his company and sons Eric and Don Jr., filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the Internal Revenue Service seeking \u201cat least $10,000,000,000\u201d in damages.<\/p>\n Ten billion dollars! <\/em><\/p>\n Basically, in 2019 and 2020, an IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn leaked Trump\u2019s and the Trump Organization\u2019s confidential tax returns and related filings to the New York Times<\/em>, ProPublica, \u201cand other leftist media outlets,\u201d as the lawsuit put it. Admittedly, this was illegal, even though Trump had<\/em> repeatedly (and falsely) promised<\/a> to make his tax returns public. In 2024, Littlejohn was sentenced to five years<\/a> in prison for his leaks, which included a trove of documents<\/a> that revealed how little<\/a> US billionaires pay in tax.<\/p>\n The Trump lawsuit claims that the leaks caused the Trumps and their company \u201creputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs\u2019 public standing.\u201d<\/p>\n This is corruption of \u201ca different scale,\u201d because Trump \u201cis negotiating a settlement with the government that he runs to take taxpayer money from hardworking folks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The reputational claims are notable, coming from a man found guilty<\/a> or liable<\/a> in several civil and criminal fraud cases and liable for defamation<\/a> and sexual abuse<\/a>. Trump\u2019s company, the Trump Organization, was found guilty<\/a> of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. And of course there\u2019s Trump\u2019s incitement of the violent attempt by his followers on January 6, 2021, to thwart the peaceful transfer of government, for which Trump was impeached though not convicted.<\/p>\n Early in his second term, Trump then pardoned all of the J6ers, dozens of whom, according to <\/a>the legal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), had been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for unrelated crimes in the wake of January 6, including rape, domestic violence, weapons charges, and possession of child pornography. (Has America forgotten Willie Horton?)<\/p>\n Some even reoffended after Trump pardoned them, including a man who had been sentenced to five years in prison for his role in January 6, and this past February pleaded guilty to threatening the life of the US House Minority Leader: \u201cHakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,\u201d he\u2019d written<\/a>, according to court filings. \u201cEven if I am hated, he must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n All that aside, the primary legal question in Trump v. IRS<\/em> is whether a president\u2019s government<\/em> lawyers can mount a meaningful defense against a president\u2019s personal<\/em> lawyers\u2014in this case pertaining to the transgressions of that president\u2019s own administration<\/em> during his first term. The correct answer is: no<\/em>, of course not<\/em>.<\/p>\n CREW, along with the nonprofit group Public Citizen, filed a friend of the court brief<\/a> in the Trump lawsuit, which notes, \u201cThe President\u2019s two hats in this litigation\u2014his personal capacity as plaintiff and his role as chief Executive\u2014make it impossible for attorneys in the Department of Justice (DOJ) to fulfill their ethical duties to zealously represent the interests of the defendant agencies against President Trump\u2019s claims.\u201d <\/p>\n The brief urges Kathleen Williams, the federal judge in Florida overseeing the case, to hit pause on the proceedings and \u201cenjoin the parties from terminating the lawsuit through an unconstitutional monetary settlement while the President remains in office.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, as the New York Times<\/em> first reported<\/a> last Tuesday, there is talk of just such a settlement. Judge Williams had set a May 20 deadline for the two sides to submit briefs explaining why they should even be considered two sides\u2014a prerequisite for any lawsuit, since one cannot sue oneself. Williams also, the Times<\/em> noted, appointed six reputable outside lawyers to weigh in on \u201cwhether Mr. Trump\u2019s lawsuit is legitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n With seemingly little chance of convincing the skeptical judge, the two sides\u2014which are actually one side\u2014have scrambled to concoct a settlement prior to her deadline. Among the terms initially discussed, the Times<\/em> noted, was that the IRS might be precluded from auditing the Trumps and their companies in the future.<\/p>\n That would be \u201cunheard of,\u201d says John Koskinen<\/a>, who served as IRS commissioner under President Barack Obama. \u201cI don\u2019t recall the IRS ever promising a taxpayer that there would be no audits,\u201d he told me.\u00a0\u201cAudits get settled all the time, but promising no audits simply raises the question of what someone is worried about or trying to hide.\u00a0This is especially troubling when, as the president acknowledges, the Department of Justice, representing the IRS in the case, works for the president.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The proposed settlement provides \u201cfinancial reward for those who attacked American democracy. \u201c<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n When I spoke with CREW\u2019s president, Donald Sherman, on Friday, he called the lawsuit \u201ca stunningly corrupt attempt for the president to take taxpayer money and put it in his pocket.\u201d <\/p>\n While Trump has done many corrupt things during his second term, Sherman told me, those have mostly involved outsiders buying access and influence\u2014via foreign investments in Trump crypocurrency enterprises<\/a>, for example, or billionaires shelling out for Trump\u2019s monster ballroom. \u201cHe\u2019s sought to get foreign countries to put money in his business. He sought to get American corporations to pay for his pet projects. He sought trademarks and things like that. Not the best\u2014pretty corrupt,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n But this proposal, he added, \u201cis of a different scale and a different order in terms of the corruption involved, because the president is suing the government that he runs, and negotiating a settlement with the government that he runs to take taxpayer money from hardworking folks.\u201d<\/p>\n The story took another turn later on Friday, when ABC Newscame out with new details<\/a>: Trump would consider dropping the IRS lawsuit and other audacious claims<\/a> he\u2019d made against the DOJ in 2023 and 2024, seeking $230 million in restitution for what he claimed was malicious prosecution related to Russia\u2019s 2016 influence campaign and the FBI\u2019s August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents. \u201cI was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity,\u201d he told the New York Times<\/em><\/a>. (In 2019, a court forced<\/a> Trump to pay $2 million and admit to having misused his family\u2019s own charitable funds for political purposes.)<\/p>\n The settlement now under discussion, ABC reported, would entail the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to be overseen by a commission ultimately under Trump\u2019s control. The money wouldn\u2019t go directly to Trump, but rather would be used to compensate people purportedly victimized by the \u201cweaponization\u201d of the DOJ under President Joe Biden. <\/p>\n On Saturday, ABC\u2019s Katherine Faulders wrote on X<\/a> that she\u2019d been told the commission would be \u201clikely be called \u2018The President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission,\u2019 and the total amount available in the fund will be\u2026 $1.776 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n Cute.<\/em><\/p>\n There are \u201cmajor problems with the settlement idea,\u201d says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. First, it provides \u201cfinancial reward for those who attacked American democracy. The consequence of not punishing Trump for January 6th is that now he rewards his supporters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is also,\u201d Moynihan told me, \u201cpart of a pattern where Trump is violating the basic separation of powers\u2014[$1.8] billion is a lot of money. There is no way that Congress would approve it. And yet, Trump will simply take these taxpayer resources.\u201d<\/p>\n Using public money to reward the perpetrators of right-wing violence seems potentially far worse, even, than using it to enrich the president.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Can this be stopped? \u201cIt\u2019s really up to the court to stop because obviously the majority in Congress has abdicated any responsibility,\u201d CREW\u2019s Sherman said. But if the parties act before the judge rules, things could get tricky. \u201cThere\u2019s probably some narrow mechanisms where the court could overturn a settlement,\u201d he added. Barring that, enough Republican lawmakers would have to draw the line\u2014which they have done only very rarely with this president.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s a big problem. We already have seen a great deal of corrupt intent from Trump\u2019s DOJ, both in its actual<\/em> weaponization against officials Trump despises\u2014like former FBI director James Comey<\/a> and Fed Chair Jerome Powell<\/a>, whose term ended on Friday\u2014and in its monetary settlements with Trump\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n In April, for example, Trump\u2019s DOJ agreed to pay $1.25 million<\/a> to Trump loyalist Michael Flynn, who in 2017 pleaded guilty<\/a> to lying to the FBI amid the investigation of Russian election interference. (He was pardoned by Trump in November 2020.) His subsequent lawsuit against the DOJ accused federal prosecutors of \u201cimproperly and politically<\/a> targeting General Flynn because of his lawful association\u201d with the Trump campaign. (Flynn may stand to collect even more restitution in a separate case, according to Lawfare<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s proposed $1.8 billion fund would lead to more of the same, and could potentially be used to pay off insurrectionists who engaged in violence in support of Trump on January 6\u2014some of whom sued for restitution after he granted them clemency. This \u201cslush fund,\u201d as Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional lawyer, put it to The New Republic<\/em>\u2018s Greg Sargent, would be \u201ca shocking new betrayal<\/a> of the Constitution\u201d and \u201can outrageous desecration of congressional power of the purse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n