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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 removable 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.
You mean things that Trump tried to stop and complained about as they were happening?
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.
Clinton blazed the trail, Obama reinforced it, and now that the Democrats are getting a taste of thier own "machine" politics style medicine they don't like it.
Are Democrat politicians paying for the fund or is it the average American taxpayer who has to pay?
The US taxpayer. See all the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding DOGE and the cuts to USAID early lat year.
If an NGO has to cease operations because DOGE cut its funding, it was never really a "Non-government Organization" to begin with.
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