Trump’s $1.8bn slush fund: has the Don gone too far?
Donald Trump has been much preoccupied by his place in history of late, said Noah Shachtman in The New York Times. It’s one of the reasons he’s ignoring his terrible approval ratings and focusing on his architectural legacy instead.
The way things are going, though, he won’t be remembered for his triumphal arch in Washington DC, or for his Maga philosophy – but for his “greed”.
The extent to which he and his family have enriched themselves since he returned to office is shocking enough: his wealth has more than doubled in 18 months, to about $6.1 billion (£4.5 billion), largely due to cryptodeals. Now, he has crossed a new line by misappropriating money directly from US taxpayers.
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Last week, his administration set up a fund of $1.776 billion (£1.31 billion) – a nod to the year of America’s founding – to compensate supposed victims of Biden-era “lawfare”.
The money is expected to be doled out to Trump’s allies – and officials have refused to rule out payments to the rioters convicted of assaulting police in the 6 January attacks on the US Capitol: Enrique Tarrio, former head of the Proud Boys, says he is going to ask for $2 million to $5 million (£1.5 million to £3.7 million) from the fund. A legal watchdog has rightly called this fund deal “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history”.
‘Slush-fund boondoggle’
The creation of this “slush-fund boondoggle” stems from a $10 billion (£7.4 billion) lawsuit that Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in January over the leak of his tax returns during his first presidency, said National Review.
That leak did violate Trump’s rights (the culprit, a former IRS contractor, was jailed), but there was something deeply wrong about a case in which Trump (as head of an agency – the IRS – that ultimately reports to him) was effectively both plaintiff and defendant. But as the presiding judge seemed poised to throw out the case over this conflict of interest, the administration announced that Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice had agreed an out-of-court settlement. This involved an apology for Trump, and the establishment of the vast “anti-weaponisation” fund – which expires in December 2028, so all the money in it will be handed out by the current administration.
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It’s frankly “obscene”, said Andrew Egger on The Bulwark. Decisions about who receives money from the fund will be made by a five-member panel largely appointed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer. The president will retain the power to remove its members at will. And there’ll be no transparency: the panel isn’t obliged to disclose “how they’re making disbursement decisions”, or even “who’s getting paid”.
‘Brazen corruption’
But all this is only one half of the scandal, said Matt Ford in The New Republic. As part of the settlement, the US government is now permanently precluded from examining the past tax arrangements of Trump, his sons, and his Trump Organization. So the IRS will have to drop all its many live and pending investigations into the Trump family’s affairs.
Such “brazen corruption” makes the Watergate scandal look “almost quaint”. Even some Republicans have expressed anger about this deal, said Politico, and some of the police officers attacked on 6 June have filed a lawsuit to stop the fund.
This marks a new low in the corrupt practices of Trump’s “pecuniary presidency”, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. It’s stealing from the Treasury, and using your authority, with the support of your allies in the judiciary, to make yourself unaccountable. It goes way beyond Tammany Hall-style graft. “It’s government as protection racket and the president as mob boss” – a role that Trump has now clearly embraced.
