In exchange for

Trump is having the government give him a massive load of cash because there’s nothing corrupt about that no sireeeee.

Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization dropped their $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for the Department of Justice creating a $1.776 billion fund to settle claims by people who allege they are victims of so-called lawfare.

Can you say extortion? I know I certainly can.

A Miami federal court filing by Trump’s lawyers dropping the lawsuit suggested it effectively barred a judge from analyzing whether the president’s civil suit was legally valid and from dismissing it if she found it was invalid.

I don’t know what that means. Is it up to Trump’s lawyers whether or not dropping the lawsuit bars a judge from whatever? Can’t the judge just say no it doesn’t and get on with her job?

The move came days after ABC News reported the DOJ was negotiating the settlement, which was blasted by Democratic members of Congress who called the then-expected deal a “slush fund” for allies of Trump who had been prosecuted under the Biden administration.

That’s certainly what it sounds like from here.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, said, “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-lead law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, and the IRS.”

“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated actor to unlawfully leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to left-wing news outlets such the New York Times and ProPublica, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” the spokesman said. “Similarly, President Trump was also the victim of illegal harassment and invasions of privacy as part of the politically motivated and completely discredited Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and the wrongful, election interfering raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Oh very professional. Echo Trump’s childish wording and then fail to mention the fact that he kept cartons of top secret documents that he had zero legal right to have at his “home at Mar-a-Lago”.

The advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington blasted the settlement, calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”  

“While Americans are struggling with an affordability crisis, President Trump plans to use nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to pay off his friends and allies – including potentially the violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th,” said CREW President Donald Sherman in a statement.

“By settling his absurd $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration, Trump and the Justice Department just engaged in the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency, and did so quickly in order to avoid the scrutiny of the judicial process, while quite likely violating the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause in the process,” Sherman said.

Just one more reason to wish Trump had fallen off a cliff at age 13.