Trump now wants your taxpayer dollar$ for himself
The next time you pay a federal tax bill, maybe you should make the check out to POTUS.
This New York Times headline isn’t quite right.
President Trump wants the Justice Dept. to pay him $230 million to cover the costs of federal investigations he had to defend against going all the way back to his first term in office, as the Times reported on October 21. But the Justice Dept. doesn’t have an insurance policy that covers such claims, or a pot of money for incidental settlements.
The Justice Dept. is fully funded by taxpayer dollars. So if DOJ pays Trump off, it would be a transfer of working Americans’ funds into Trump’s own pocket. The right headline would be: “Trump demands American taxpayers give him $230 million.”
I try to avoid incredulity over every Trump offense against morals and ethics. On any given day, you could wake up and say, “Can you believe Trump [fill in the blank] 😡😡😡.” Trump wants his critics to be outraged about everything, because it dilutes their resources. If you don’t choose your battles carefully, you probably won’t win any of them.
But Trump’s push for a DOJ payout is an unusually depraved self-enrichment scheme that deserves special attention. Trump did have to pay lawyers many millions of dollars to defend him in a variety of federal investigations. Before he won the 2024 presidential election, he filed a claim against DOJ seeking compensation relating to at least two cases: the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which began in 2017, and the probe into Trump’s misuse of classified information that began in 2023.
The Russia investigation, aka “the Mueller probe,” ended in 2019 with no charges against Trump, but suggestions that he obstructed justice. The DOJ probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified information hit some legal setbacks, but was still underway when Trump took office in January. Trump’s attorney general, Pan Bondi, ended that prosecution earlier this year.
Trump has long called these and other investigations “witch hunts.” Yet the Russia probe produced several criminal convictions, including Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Biden administration prosecutors indicted Trump and two others in the classified documents case. Since those cases never got to trial, a jury never determined guilt or innocence.
Trump obviously thinks he deserves taxpayer reimbursement for all the trouble those pesky prosecutors put him through. Yet there was nothing frivolous about either investigation. The Russia probe clearly documented Russian efforts to determine the outcome of a US election. The documents probe turned up evidence that Trump may have shared details of highly classified war plans regarding Iran with people lacking security clearances. Both matters directly involved US national security. Many others have gone to prison for exposing classified information or putting the United States at risk. It’s fair to apply the same standard to Trump, or any president or ex-president.
Trump apparently has the authority to approve the DOJ payout to himself. He says he would donate the money to charity. That’s a smoke screen. Trump uses money to exert power, and it’s reasonable to think any charitable “gift” from him would come with chains attached. Trump could also give the money to political-action groups and claim that as charity because they’re nonprofits. Some types of political-action committees are so poorly governed that they can effectively function as slush funds able to hire family members for do-nothing jobs and pay personal legal bills.
Trump is already profiting from his presidency more than anybody else in American history. Adding taxpayers dollars to the take would be one outrage too many.
"Trump wants his critics to be outraged about everything, because it dilutes their resources."
Excellent point. If media mastery is Trump's superpower, flooding the zone with click-bait outrages is his essential skill. As Rick says, picking one's battles carefully is key to winning at least some of them. Trying to extort $230M from American taxpayers certainly rises to the level of an outrage worth doing battle over.
Disgustingly depraved behavior! I wonder what made him or his counsel draw the line at $230M. Why couldn't it be $1B or $20B? What's to stop him when he or his minions are going to be the approvers? As I think about it - I'm going out a skimpy limb here - maybe, just maybe, Congress could have a say in funding the settlement... I think it's one of the branches of gov't and it's supposed to wield the power of the purse, or so I recall hearing decades ago, according to this antiquated piece of paper called the Constitution. Perhaps I'm wrong, I ain't no legal scholar.
Ugghhhhh