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Notes -
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:
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.
This is just spoils, which is somewhat politics as normal. What is more worrying is his pure vindictive streak in relation to spoils. For example, the House and Senate both unanimously passed an anodyne bill to fund water supplies for rural Coloradoans - Trump vetoed it and the House bowed down and didn't un-veto it. A few days ago, Colorado governor Jared Polis pardons Tina Peters, the lady who tried to demonstrate election fraud (and ended up showing that it was her own Republican number 2 that caused an 'anomaly') - and Trump passes the funding. Lauren Boebert even points this out but doesn't stop kissing the ring.
The hilarious part of this too is that being rural, they were likely a more MAGA centric area. So Trump was taking revenge on his own supporters and hoping Polis wasn't a cruel monster and would have enough empathy for the rurals to play ball.
This is not unique behavior from Trump
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