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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   2626 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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Is presidential corruption still culture war?

You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.

As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:

Within 60 days of the Effective Date, the United States shall provide the U.S. Department of the Treasury with all necessary forms and documentation to direct a payment of $1,776,000,000 to an account for the sole use by the Anti-Weaponization Fun ("Designated Account"). The corpus of the Anti-Weaponization Fund's funding does not represent the value of any claim by Plaintiffs, but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimants' claims.

Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!

ETA:

ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removal at-will by the President.

The incredible part is that the lawsuit isn't even just about something the federal government did, but something the federal government did under Trump. Regardless of your thoughts about the Biden or Obama admins, allowing this logic is insane and incentivizes every future president to "harm" themselves or allies (and they of course don't even have to actually show any real harm cause it's all done through settlements!), sue themselves, and then distribute taxpayer money among themselves, their friends and other allies. It blatantly turns the government, and the American taxpayer, into a personal piggy bank.

something the federal government did under Trump.

You mean things that Trump tried to stop and complained about as they were happening?

Can it really be the case that you are arguing that Trump would never play 4D chess?

4D chess is itself a bad meme that fails to explain anything about Trump. (You wouldn’t say have faith that LeBron James will win because he’s playing 4D chess, although in a literal sense that’s what basketball is.)

But also, Trump did not pretend to fight his persecution so he could do this later. He fought and won, that’s all.

Was Trump not president during 2019-2020? The IRS was under his control. Now maybe he was too incompetent as a boss to ensure that the workers under him don't leak things, but that seems like his fault and I don't get why the American taxpayer should have to pay him or his allies for his own fuck ups.

First of all a large part of this settlement is wrapping up lawsuits of Trump allies suing the Biden IRS for unfairly targeting them.

Second of all, obviously in a system of separated powers the president can’t just unilaterally impose his will. We allowed American democracy to become this frankensystem of empowered bureaucrats and who answered to no one. We called it the “Deep State” although when we used this term people imagined that we meant secret council conspiracies and complained. But now, of course, Trump has won and is being allowed to remake the government. What you call “incompetence” is the consequence of a big dramatic fight that has lasted the last ten years.

The IRS was out of control and lawlessly leaked his tax returns. This is a reoccurring problem with Federal bureaucracies illegally defying the Executive if he's a Republican.

Now maybe he was too incompetent as a boss to ensure that the workers under him don't leak things,

I don't think competence is the limiting factor in something like this. Without resorting to scifi or fantasy, it's hard to fathom how the POTUS could be sufficiently "competent" as to guarantee that no leaks in the entire federal government happens ever. Of course, the buck stops with the POTUS, but also, e.g. we don't execute the POTUS every time someone in the federal government is convicted of treason, and I think the reason we don't is that we don't assign blame to the POTUS for every individual crime that anyone working under him commits (maybe we should! The world might be a lot better in a lot of ways). And I think it's reasonable to believe that not assigning such blame is the correct thing to do.

POTUS appoints the people who run the agencies or appoints the people who appoints the people and so on and so forth. Like you said, the buck stops with them.

Does that mean they get personal blame for everything a random employee does? No. But it's still nonsense logic to try to sue your administration for what your admin did.

POTUS appoints the people who run the agencies or appoints the people who appoints the people and so on and so forth. Like you said, the buck stops with them.

Do you know what the civil service system is?

Does that mean they get personal blame for everything a random employee does? No. But it's still nonsense logic to try to sue your administration for what your admin did.

That'd depend heavily on the precise set of details. As you said, the POTUS doesn't get personal blame for everything a random employee does.

Yes, but if you establish this as a precedent then the next president to come along can just wink wink nudge nudge and trigger similar events performatively: publicly complaining while secretly encouraging it behind closed doors in order to enrich themselves. Even if Trump as trailblazer did not set this up on purpose, it is a trail we do not want blazed.

Obama blazed this trail. Eric Holder would sue companies over disparate impact (which is an impossible standard to follow), then make them pay out a big DOJ slush fund in settlement. Which itself is just an extension of the NGO-government pipeline Democrats long-go pioneered. There is no new precedent here, the government has been suing itself to achieve ends it could not achieve democratically for a loooooong time now.

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