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.

Comments

10 responses to “In exchange for”

  1. Steven Avatar

    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?

    Courts only hear cases that are brought before them. And courts only deal with genuine disputes between opposing parties.

    So the judge’s first reaction was that Trump suing the DOJ that he himself controls is not a genuine dispute. She ordered the two “parties” (Trump and the DOJ) to file briefs explaining why she should not dismiss the case on those grounds.

    Trump’s people probably told him that he was going to lose on this. So Trump dropped the lawsuit–a plaintiff can generally drop a suit whenever they want.

    What’s more, Trump dropped the suit with prejudice, which means he can not refile the suit later. So this case is no longer before the judge, and it never will be again, so the judge has no case to hear or rule on. This saves Trump the embarrassment–and possible legal obstacle–of having a federal judge telling him to get stuffed.

  2. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    Steven, the dropped lawsuit had been against the IRS, not the DoJ. Trump was suing them for $10B. over the leaking of his tax returns to the media.

    I’m no lawyer but I don’t see how that could be worth a $10B payout, and I would assume that Trump and his lawyers knew that it wouldn’t fly. So why was it filed in the first place? My guess is that Trump and his cronies running the DoJ cooked this up between them. File a lawsuit against the IRS for £10B, sit back and wait until it’s been widely reported then drop it in exchange for a ‘paltry’ $1.767B ‘compensation’ fund.

    Obviously, he couldn’t have both because the lawsuit was bound to fail, but it was never intended to get to court. All that matters to Trump is that he gets the slush fund, and he can con his supporters yet again by convincing them that he did the deal for them. As far as they’ll understand it he turned down a $10B payday (because he’ll swear it was a slam dunk case) to ensure that the victims of the Democratic witch hunt are compensated for their ordeals. Not only is he looking out for their best interests over his own, but he’s also saving $8.224B of their tax dollars.

    And the suckers will swallow it. Sideways.

  3. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    Somehow, in the first line of my final paragraph above, ‘both’ was changed to ‘bothered’.

    I bloody hate autocorrect.

  4. Ophelia Benson Avatar

    Ugh god yes so do I – it keeps “fixing” my wording when I had worded it exactly the way I wanted to. I’m a good editor, and I have my own style; I do not need the help of a robot.

  5. twiliter Avatar

    I have all that stuff turned off. My mistakes are my own. How it should be.

  6. twiliter Avatar

    Trump should have been drowned as a pup. Didn’t anyone see this coming?

  7. Sumi Avatar

    So, a convicted criminal president is stealing $1.8 billion from taxpayers to compensate people who committed crimes on his behalf. And people still think the US is a democracy?

  8. iknklast Avatar

    What I’m wondering is if his supporters will actually see any of the $1.8B? If it’s like most things Trump, it will somehow never happen, and will mysteriously move into one of his accounts, or be used for something to aggrandize him or please him.

    You could buy a lot of two-scoop sundaes with 1.8B.

  9. Papito Avatar

    It’s straight-up looting. America is a banana republic now.

  10. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    As several others have pointed out, the real message conveyed by this is: “If you engage in criminal activities on my behalf, I will not only pardon you, but there might even be a profit to be made.”

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