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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.
The IRS under Obama targeted conservatives. They looked at your political action group and determined if you were conservative before deciding if you would get an audit or not. This is all public knowledge and nobody was made to suffer for this except Lois Lerner eventually losing her job.
We even had a fight a few years later in the Biden years over expanding the IRS and adding more agents so they could audit more people. Nothing was ever done to make sure they won’t target conservatives again, but we will just pretend that that isn’t related because those are two separate storylines so connecting those two dots is a non-sequitur. Result: the IRS that targeted conservatives and was never punished for it got more powerful.
Now that the government reaches a settlement every Trump critic wants to call this a Trump corruption case. ? Well, what is the federal government supposed to do? In fact, we now have a richly-established norm of NGOs and activists suing the federal government and so that their political allies who run the government can settle. Welcome to the world you made. This kind of thing happened all the time under Obama, all the time, all the time! — remember when companies were made to pay settlements directly into DOJ slush funds?— and I still hear about how the only scandal Obama ever had was his tan suit.
It’s very unusual for the government to target conservative political groups! And the sitting president over made-up stories that he colluded with Russia. And all of his allies for process crimes such as entrapment while being interviewed by FBI agents who didn’t tell you they were investigating you. And et cetera et cetera etc. It would have been really easy for Trump not to sue the government if they hadn’t wronged him in the first place!
I would really actually enjoy a good argument about why exactly this is even corruption. All I see online is a lot of pointing from people very selectively not mentioning the government’s extremely well-documented political campaigns against conservatives, Trump, and Trump’s allies. What else did we think would happen? People who were harassed by the government actually have a right to settle to make themselves whole, and this is what happens when those same people win control of that government. What did you think would happen after spying on his campaign? $1.776 Billion is getting off easy.
While I agree that Russia independently attempted to intercede in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf rather than in collusion, I can't think of a more "secretly in cahoots with Putin" move possible than invading Iran in 2026.
Did they? AIUI, they preferred Hilary because they'd already bought her and thought she was a known (weak) quantity. The "intercessions" I'm aware of were a mix of general shit-stirring and (probable) ass-covering after the DNC hack was caught.
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Invading Russia’s ally is in accords with Russia?
Absolutely - it drastically raised oil prices and created reasons to ease sanctions on Russian oil. I would not recommend being Russia's ally.
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