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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 old stuff, this is how lawfare is done. You troll around the courts until your party is in office, then you settle the case for yourself, and give billions of taxpayer money to "Charitable organizations" that happen to be your political allies, and that's how you fund your politics. The only thing that is new is that Trump is doing it on the Republican side, rather than this being a one-party thing due to the control of major cities.
Complain about corruption if you want, but no tool of lawfare stays in only one toolbox. The entire reason the left hates Trump is that he does politics back to them. They used the Deep State to leak private financial records? Now Trump hits back. After a hundred felony counts and the blanket decade-pardons, I don't ever want to hear a criticism of Trump's dirty dealings without the full disclaimer. It's not corruption when the other side has been doing it for eighty years, but it is very precious special pleading.
We used to have the question of "who was president in 2020?", now we have the question of "who was president in 2018?". He was the guy in charge! He's suing himself for his own administration's failure to properly secure information.
Do you think we should abolish the Civil Service? Going back to the patronage system would make your position here much more tenable.
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