When a president settles his own lawsuit to create a fund for allies, fundamental questions about justice arise

 

Thomas Hobbes took a very dim view of rebels and insurrectionists. He believed that insurrectionists relinquish their status as citizens the moment they seek to overthrow the government and should never be rewarded for doing so.

Hobbes, one of the finest political theorists of his time, said this in his great political treatise, “Leviathan,” published in 1651 during a civil war in England and Scotland. Hobbes would likely also take a dim view of a major development announced by the Trump administration on May 20, 2026.

The U.S. Department of Justice has established a US$1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” to be used, the AP reports, to “allow people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes, including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for payouts.”

The fund, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, offers “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” Critics immediately charged that it might be used to compensate people involved in – some even convicted for – the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Blanche has not ruled out that possibility.

The establishment of the fund is part of a settlement agreement, in response to which President Donald Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for damages stemming from the leak of his tax returns. Those leaks, the lawsuit alleged, “caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump.”

A DOJ press release indicates the fund will provide “formal apologies and monetary relief” to those who file claims and will cease processing claims “no later than” Dec. 1, 2028. It will be run by a five-person board appointed by the attorney general, and the president will also have the power to remove board members.

Whether or not Jan. 6 participants benefit, some believe that this situation creates an unavoidable appearance of self-dealing and favoritism. As a student of American law and political morality, I think there are important moral and constitutional issues implicated by the president’s suit against the IRS and the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Some of them are straightforward; others are less so.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche testified about the compensation fund during a Senate Committee on May 19, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

An obvious question is: Should taxpayer funds be given to Trump allies, in a settlement reached by the Trump-controlled DOJ as compensation for a Trump family lawsuit?

As far back as ancient Greece, philosophers like Aristotle have worried about what happens when people are called on to make judgments in cases where they are involved. Aristotle thought that the natural instinct for self-preservation meant that they would always favor themselves. From that concern emerged what was then, and remains, an uncontroversial, bedrock moral principle.

In the Roman world, the Latin phrase “Nemo iudex in causa sua” meant “no one should be a judge in their own cause.” It recognized that anyone having a personal interest should not get to decide matters in which they are involved.

In the English-speaking world, Hobbes himself reiterated that phrase as he explained some of the advantages of living in an organized society, which could supply impartial judges to resolve disputes. And in 1787, James Madison wrote, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.”

Commentators reacting to the Justice Department’s decision to establish an Anti-Weaponization Fund to settle the president’s claims against the IRS have drawn on these longstanding principles to criticize it, including how the DOJ, which is part of the executive branch controlled by Trump, negotiated with him to reach this settlement.

The conservative lawyer and activist Ed Whelan said, “There is a glaring conflict of interest with Trump being on both sides of the claim.” Whelan added, “It is outrageous that he and those answering to him would be deciding how the government responds to these extravagant claims.”

In testimony on May 19, 2026, before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Blanche offered a different view. He said the settlement fund was not unprecedented and likened it to a different fund, established by the Obama administration, to settle discrimination claims brought by Native American and Black farmers.

“It’s not limited to Republicans. It’s not limited to Democrats,” Blanche added. “It’s not limited to January 6th defendants. It’s limited only by the term weaponization.” Blanche promised that payments from the fund will be publicly disclosed.

Negotiating with himself:

In April, Kathleen Williams, the Florida federal judge who was presiding over Trump’s lawsuit, reframed the moral issue of self-dealing as a legal one. She questioned whether the case could go on, noting “President Trump’s own remarks about this matter acknowledge the unique dynamic of this litigation.”

The remarks she referenced occurred when the president talked about the lawsuit and the prospect of negotiating with himself. “And they do say that, you know, it’s never been a case like this. Donald Trump sues the United States of America. Donald Trump becomes president, and now Donald Trump has to settle the suit.”

Williams, the judge, wrote that “it is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement.” That requirement means that a court can only rule when there is a real dispute before it.

That rule is designed to prevent so-called collusive lawsuits, in which “the parties are not actually in disagreement but are cooperating” to achieve a result. Judge Williams was scheduled to hear arguments on that question on May 20, 2026. But the settlement announcement was made two days before, and, in light of it, she dismissed the case.

Could the new settlement fund’s payments go to rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? 

Back to Hobbes:

Beyond the case and controversy question, the Justice Department’s actions may implicate constitutional issues. One is whether, under the constitutional separation of powers, the executive branch has the authority to create a victim compensation fund, or whether that authority rests with Congress.

Another is whether the fund violates the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the president from receiving any “Emolument from the United States” other than his salary. While the new fund may not make direct payments to Trump, he may benefit from payments to family members, business associates and others who will claim to have been victimized by the Biden administration, including people prosecuted and convicted of crimes committed on Jan. 6.

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law, also contends that what the Justice Department has done violates Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, part of which states: “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Referring to the president, Raskin argues hypothetically, “So, to the extent that he wants to give a million dollars to each of 1,600 pardoned rioters and insurrectionists, we think that that’s an unconstitutional use of money.”

That section of the 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that Confederate rebels would not receive compensation for the value of their emancipated slaves. However, in Perry v. United States, a 1935 case, the Supreme Court stated that Section 4’s “language indicates a broader connotation” beyond its Civil War context.

It seems clear that courts will soon be asked to decide whether Raskin and other legal critics are right in their assertions of a host of legal problems with the Anti-Weaponization Fund. How they will do so remains to be seen. But, in a democracy, deciding whether the creation of the fund violates the moral maxim that no one can be a judge in his or her own cause ultimately will be up to the people.

- Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

-The Conversation

“FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing... Mr. Trump"

 

The Justice Department has granted Donald Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability. The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.

The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.

The provision invited immediate criticism as tax experts raised the possibility that it was illegal. That the addendum to the deal was posted, without fanfare, on the department’s website belied its bare-knuckled audacity. It revealed the determination of Mr. Trump and his appointees to ram through maximalist measures with minimum outside scrutiny at a moment when they still have uncontested control of government.

The provision was the latest in a series of maneuvers this week that blurred the all-but-vanished boundary between official department business and the private interests of a president intent on using his power to extract financial gain from the federal government for himself and his allies.

A day earlier, Mr. Trump agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. in exchange for the establishment of a fund for people he believes were wronged by federal investigations or prosecutions. Justice Department officials had in part defended the creation of the fund by pointing to the fact that Mr. Trump and his family members would not be paid by it.

But protection from audit could be quite financially beneficial for Mr. Trump, who has always said that there was no wrongdoing in his tax filings. In 2024, The New York Times reported that a loss in an I.R.S. audit could cost Mr. Trump more than $100 million.

It is unclear if that examination has concluded or if Mr. Trump, his family members or affiliated entities are under other audits. I.R.S. procedures call for the mandatory audit of the president’s tax returns annually. Neither the Justice Department nor the I.R.S. responded to requests seeking comment. The top lawyer at the Treasury, Brian Morrissey, resigned on Monday after the Justice Department announced the deal with Mr. Trump.

Federal law prohibits the president, vice president and other executive officers from instructing the I.R.S. to start or stop specific audits. But that broad prohibition appears to include a carve out for the attorney general. Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney adviser at New York University’s Tax Law Center, said in a statement that the audit protection may still be illegal.

“The I.R.S. would need to act to make the release of claims effective, which could raise additional questions about whether there has been unlawful political interference in the audit process,” he said. “The settlement and general release of claims is a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system.”

The disclosure of the provision came as blowback appeared to be mounting over the creation of the fund, including from a few Republican lawmakers typically wary of incurring Mr. Trump’s wrath. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, offered rare criticism of the president, saying he “was not a big fan” of the fund and adding that he did not see a “purpose” to it.

The Times reported last week that Mr. Trump’s talks with the Justice Department and the I.R.S. had included a measure calling on the I.R.S. to drop any audits of the president, his relatives or businesses. But that provision did not appear in the nine-page agreement laying out the terms to dismiss the lawsuit, which the department released on Monday.

In January, Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, sued the Internal Revenue Service for at least $10 billion over the leak of their tax returns during the president’s first term. The Trumps argued that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent a former contractor from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.

Even as the original nine-page agreement offered scant details of how disbursement would work or who would be eligible, it said that claimants could seek money from the government for having faced reprisals for “personal, political and/or ideological reasons.” It stated that a five-person commission would consider claims based on criteria like damages a person had incurred or any time they spent in federal custody.

The main agreement also indicated that claims would largely be handed out in secrecy, requiring the fund managers to provide the attorney general on a quarterly basis with a “confidential written report” of those who received any money. The fund would stop processing claims no later than Dec. 1, 2028, just weeks before Mr. Trump is scheduled to leave office.

Frank Bisignano, the chief executive of the I.R.S., signed the original, nine-page deal. The provisions granting Mr. Trump immunity from existing audits, though, was signed only by Mr. Blanche, who has stepped up carrying out Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against his enemies.

During an appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, Mr. Blanche defended the fund. At one point, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, repeatedly accused Mr. Blanche of behaving more like a Trump defense lawyer than an independent guardian of the public interest.

Mr. Blanche pushed back, asserting that he was “the acting attorney general.”

Mr. Van Hollen replied, “Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president’s personal attorney, and that’s the whole problem.”

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. 

Andrew Duehren covers tax policy for The Times from Washington.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

A version of this article appears in print on May 20, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: I.R.S. Ordered to Drop Audits Against Trump As Part of Payout Deal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

 

"Democracy survives only if ordinary people are willing to defend it"

 

The generations that defeated fascism in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1940s understood something simple but profound: democracy survives only if ordinary people are willing to defend it. Are we today?

The United States and the Republic of China (the official name for Taiwan) — one of the world’s most vibrant and functional democracies — have had a formal defense relationship since 1955. Last week, Donald Trump — who’s been withholding since last year two shipments totaling $25 billion worth of US military hardware Taiwan has purchased — said that relationship is now a “bargaining chip” to get what he, his oligarch friends, and his family want from China.

America was founded on the idea that democracy — a form of government that our Founders discovered functioning well among Native American societies, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living — was our north star, the core concept around which all our actions revolved.

We fought Great Britain to establish democracy, fought against the fascist Confederacy to preserve democracy here in America, and helped fight German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese fascists to preserve and restore democracy in Europe and Asia. After winning each battle, we became a little more democratic, enfranchising women, formerly enslaved people, and even 18-year-olds. We welcomed the diverse people of the world, groaning under oppression and poverty, to share our democracy and the free enterprise system it enabled.

Most of the countries in today’s world, however, have little use for democracy. Certainly, Putin, Xi, and the Middle Eastern sheiks view it as a threat to their wealth and power. Most of the smaller countries across the world are dominated by wealthy families (oligarchy) or violent warlords (autocracy); during the decades I did international relief work, I spent time in many of them.

And yet we always fought for democracy, even though we started out imperfectly. We helped create the United Nations, a democratic institution. We fought and died for European and Asian democracy. We encouraged democracy around the world through foreign aid programs like USAID and through pro-democracy advocacy operations like the Voice of America.

Until Trump.

Today, we have a president who holds democracy and democratic nations in disdain. He openly ridicules our democratic allies while sucking up to and praising autocrats and oligarchs. He gutted USAID, killed Voice of America, and even tried to overthrow our own democracy and will probably try again.

His racist, homophobic, and “poorly educated” followers agree with his disdain for democracy, openly embracing his despotic proclamations because he hates the same people they hate. Republican politicians who once defended American democracy cow before his threats of revenge when, like Senator Bill Cassidy, they don’t join him in embracing Putin and fail to nakedly cheer Trump’s violations of international law.

Foreign billionaires like the Fox “News” Murdochs and the Middle Eastern sheiks who’ve poured billions into Trump’s family are apparently happy to see our democracy under assault. About a hundred domestic billionaire families are enthusiastically willing to trade democracy and the free press it requires for tax cuts and deregulation.

So, what happens if they win? What happens if America finally, fully abandons the alliances we’ve built up over 250 years and instead embraces this autocratic new world order of Putin, Xi, and the corrupt billionaires who run most of the world’s autocracies?

If we formally pull out of NATO or simply, quietly continue the process of abandoning the alliance? If we leave Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and South Korea to the tender mercies of the Chinese Communist Party? If we continue our embrace of “America’s coolest dictator” Bukele in El Salvador and Rodriguez in Venezuela and let their authoritarianism continue to metastasize across our hemisphere?

If the GOP and its billionaire owners manage to muzzle all but a token remnant of our once-vibrant free press, if ICE becomes Trump’s and Vance’s personal Schutzstaffel and throws open their “detention centers” to the “liberal” Americans they’ve already designated as “domestic terrorists”? If they continue to follow Putin’s system of tightly regulating who’s eligible to vote (while corrupting Democrats like Fetterman) so Republicans never lose?

What happens if they win?

Then the wealthiest people on Earth finally get the world they’ve always wanted, from the days they opposed the American Revolution, to fighting against Lincoln, to “America First” billionaires trying to hire Smedley Butler to assassinate FDR, to now supporting Trump:

A world where democracy is weak.
Labor is powerless.
The press is controlled.
Religion is weaponized.
Elections are managed.
Fear keeps people obedient.
And billionaires rule without accountability.

That’s the oligarch’s endgame and has been for millennia. It’s why they bought off Sinema, Manchin, Golden, and Fetterman and are inserting themselves in elections across the nation. It’s why they’re buying our media. It’s why Republicans in Congress keep sending more and more of our taxpayer money to ICE while ignoring Trump’s multiple impeachable offenses from war crimes to emoluments violations to the open betrayal of our democratic allies.

Not “making America great.”
Not patriotism.
Not Christianity.
Not freedom.

Raw power for a small handful of morbidly rich men, enforced by propaganda, corruption, and violence, both committed by agents of the state (against Comey, James, Schiff et al, and soon to be directed against you and me) as well as J6 freelancers Trump is trying to pre-pay with $1.7 billion just in time for this fall’s election.

Roughly every 80 years, it seems, the battle to preserve democracy comes back around and confronts the generation then living. And here it is again. The generations that defeated fascism in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1940s understood something simple but profound: democracy survives only if ordinary people are willing to defend it. Now it’s our turn.

Help to keep up the fight!

-Thom Hartmann

The MAGA Supreme Court is Incompatible with Democracy

 

MAGA Supreme Court majority put a stake through the Voting Rights Act, at least for now, and unleashed a frenzy of chaotic redistricting in the South designed to erase 60 years of voting rights progress. The MAGA justices aggrandized power specifically delegated to Congress in the 14^th Amendment (“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”) and the 15^th Amendment (“The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation”) to themselves, dismissing Congress’s clear intent to prohibit redistricting that has the effect of diluting minority voting power.

Carolyn Shapiro exposed the power grab: Congress’ clear command in the 1982 VRA amendments that it was protecting minority voters from redistricting that had the effect of reducing their voting power relative to other voters should mean that a state’s desire to advantage one party over another is irrelevant to Section 2 liability. … [I]it essentially incorporates the law of unconstitutional intentional discrimination into Section 2 – precisely what Congress was trying to avoid. But Callais also all but holds that Congress’ power under the 15th Amendment is limited to restricting discriminatory intent, not discriminatory effects.

The Voting Rights Act antagonists did not have the nerve to strike down the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. The VRA therefore remains nominally on the books but of virtually no value. (We will see how seriously the MAGA majority takes Callais’s assurance that intentional discrimination can still be prohibited; after all, that is precisely what the three-judge panel found in striking down Alabama’s map.) In sidelining Congress and claiming authority to dictate remedies needed to fulfill the promise of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, the Callais majority sparked a massive movement in defense of voting rights, which was kicked off…

The MAGA justices’ reactionary judicial activism is rooted in an insidious sleight of hand. Callais is just their latest willful misreading of the post-Civil War amendments, which never sought to outlaw the race-conscious remedies needed to guarantee the ex-enslaved full citizenship. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson documented in her pristine originalist interpretation, the canard of a “colorblind society” does not derive from the intent, legislative history, or text; it is an invention that comes from deliberately rewriting the 14^th and 15^th Amendments and the VRA in service of white Republican power.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. takes umbrage at the notion the court has become “political.” Gosh, where would people get that idea? Steve Vladeck explained:

[T]he Court inserted itself into the midterm cycle—and set off this race to the bottom—knowingly (if not deliberately), both in what it ruled in Callais and in its willingness to issue the judgment immediately. That latter development was an unmissable signal that it was not averse to having this exact kind of chaos unfold on the ground—a point Justice Jackson made explicitly in her dissent from last Monday’s order. In her words, “as always, the Court has a choice.” …

This, to me, is the key point: whatever one thinks of the ruling in Callais, the Court chose this chaos.. .. Worse than that, all of these developments rather fatally undermine what I’d always understood to be the animating purpose of the so-called “Purcell principle”—which makes sense only as a strong norm against federal judicial intervention in the middle of election cycles. The Court’s own interventions are now wreaking havoc—and a majority of the justices either don’t think it’s their fault, or don’t care that it is.

Having discarded any pretense of political neutrality or consistency, MAGA justices should prepare to reap the whirlwind. They should anticipate that a backlash against Jim Crow will seek to end judicial intrusion into partisan politics and policy matters (e.g., commandeering voting rights remedies, superseding administrative rules with nebulous doctrines such as the Major Questions doctrine) and to re-assert the authority of the elected branches of government.

Democrats should be candid and uncompromising about their plans. An unhinged court, beginning with Shelby County, has exceeded the Plessy court in cementing white supremacy. Proposals to expand seats on the court are not simply designed to match the number of federal circuits; imposing term limits is not merely intended to prevent infirmed justices from lingering on the court. Democrats are prepared to do these things and potentially curtail the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction because the court has become a rogue threat to democracy. That message was on display in a demonstration of grassroots political power on Saturday: Democracy belongs to the people, not to right-wing justices putting their thumbs on the scale for Republicans.

Dramatic reform measures would not be necessary if the MAGA justices had not willfully misinterpreted post-Civil War amendments or played fast and loose with the Purcell doctrine. Had MAGA justices not trashed stare decisis to achieve partisan aims, manipulated the shadow docket to disguise executive power grabs, and brazenly dispensed with any pretense of partisan neutrality, serious judicial reform would not be essential.

Saturday’s Day of Action gave us a preview of the fierce political backlash against Jim Crow that can check judicial tyranny. Democracy defenders must turn out in overwhelming numbers but also apply a litmus test for every candidate for federal office: Will you rein in partisan judicial hacks who made hash of separation of powers and endangered multi-racial democracy?

Democrats will not have the opportunity to control Congress and the presidency until 2029. Nevertheless, they must start now to focus voters’ attention, as they did on Saturday, on MAGA justices’ quest to displace the voters’ elected representatives (i.e., overriding the VRA’s intent) in service of Jim Crow. MAGA justices delegitimized the Supreme Court; it’s up to the voters, through the elected branches, to end their foray into judicial imperialism that threatens multi-racial democracy.

Arrogant judicial partisans steeped in myths about the 14^th and 15^th Amendments have revealed their hostility to pluralistic democracy. If voters want their democracy back, they will have to elect a Congress and president willing to reassert popular sovereignty essential to our constitutional order. Judging from the democratic fervor on Saturday, voters appear up to the task.

---

Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now

 

Records show Trump touted Palantir on Truth Social after buying the company’s stock

Donald Trump scooped up shares of artificial intelligence software maker Palantir weeks before he famously lauded the stock, with its ticker symbol, on his social media platform Truth Social, according to records released this week by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

The records show thousands of transactions during the first quarter totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, with each trade listed as a price range.

During the first three months of the year, Trump purchased between $247,008 and $630,000 worth of stock in the now Miami-based AI company, the documents show. In March alone, Trump made at least seven purchases of Palantir totaling as much as $530,000.

The following month, Trump praised Palantir on Truth Social as shares suffered their worst week in over a year. That came as the software selloff accelerated amid the Iran war and the company caught the ire of famed short-seller Michael Burry.

“Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment,” Trump wrote on the social media platform at the time. “Just ask our enemies!!!”

The company’s tools have reportedly been used to identify targets in Iran. Several transactions were denoted as “unsolicited,” indicating that the move wasn’t done by recommendation of a broker or financial advisor.

“Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions. Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions,” a Trump Organization spokesperson said in a statement.

Trump, his family and the Trump organization don’t play a “role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” they added. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind,” the spokesperson said.

White House spokesman David Ingle said the president’s assets are in a trust managed by his children and, “There are no conflicts of interest.” Palantir did not respond to a request for comment. The defense tech company is among a batch of such firms currying favor with the president during his second stint in the White House, as Trump accelerates the military’s push for modernization.

-CNBC

For violation of the Emoluments Clause: glen brown: "No president in American history has profited off the presidency the way Donald Trump has, and it’s not close"

"Never in American history have we seen corruption remotely like what is going on with Donald Trump and his cronies in and outside of government"

Leading off the list will be Trump’s personal lawsuit to brazenly pick $10 billion out of Americans’ pockets. It is a new low. 

And his machinations in recent days when it looked like a federal judge might stop him only highlight how depraved this whole scheme is. For this week’s publishers note we thought we would offer a deep dive on our new top scandal—with the full list to follow tomorrow.

This sordid story begins in January, when Trump, with his sons and the Trump Organization, sued the IRS and the Treasury Department. The plaintiffs argued that the agencies failed to take appropriate measures to protect Trump’s tax information, which leaked.

The lawsuit is riddled with flaws. For starters, it targets the wrong entity. No one in the IRS leaked his taxes; an outside contractor from Booz Allen Hamilton disclosed the information. For that and many other reasons, the lawsuit is entirely defensible by DOJ – indeed, a comparable one was settled for no payment at all.

Most outrageous of all is the amount originally sought: $10 billion. That is more than the entire annual appropriation for the IRS, an agency of 75,000 employees.

And it is an agency Trump ultimately oversees, as is the other defendant, the Treasury Department. Although Trump claims to be acting in his personal capacity as the plaintiff in this lawsuit, he is the chief executive of the federal government. He is in effect both the plaintiff and the defendant in this case! It is like a bank robbery committed by the CEO and board of directors of the bank.

In the annals of American law, it is hard to find an example of a president effectively suing himself. It’s not just wrong; it also raises profound constitutional issues. 

The President is prohibited by the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution from receiving any “profit, gain, or advantage“ from the United States other than his salary. This frivolous cash grab—whether paid to Trump directly or diverted at his direction to a fund that benefits his loyalists—is the exact type of corrupt self-dealing that the founders and framers were concerned with when they signed the Constitution.

And then there is Article III’s Case or Controversy requirement for a federal lawsuit. It provides that a legal action is only valid if the parties are actually adverse to one another. A case that is in effect Donald Trump v. Donald Trump hardly seems to fit.

Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida was rightly skeptical. She asked Trump’s personal lawyers and the government attorneys to submit briefs by May 20 explaining how the parties are genuinely adverse. She also asked six well-regarded lawyers to serve as amici, friends of the court, providing their view of the legitimacy of this lawsuit.

Needless to say, Trump is not keen on this kind of scrutiny and potential rejection of his legal complaint. Giving additional fuel to fears of collusion, on Tuesday, reports emerged that Justice is in settlement negotiations regarding this $10 billion lawsuit. Typically, when a plaintiff settles a case out of court, he is free to drop the case, and that is the end of the matter. If that kind of side deal were allowed to happen here, the settlement would escape judicial scrutiny.

Those concerns about a plot to dodge the court were only heightened by subsequent reports that emerged throughout the week. They suggest that Trump may now drop this and other lawsuits, including one seeking damages from DOJ relating to the seizure of classified documents he wrongly retained at his Florida home. In exchange, DOJ is said to be establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate those whom Trump claims were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the DOJ, including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Jan. 6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers should not be able to seek a financial reward for their actions. Nor should the rest of the rogues gallery of wrongdoers and Trump allies who are included in his bogus “weaponization” claims. Though Trump is said not to be able to directly apply for payment, it appears that people or entities linked to him will not be precluded.

Judge Williams should not fall for it. She has the power to investigate all this, and she should do so. This is a historically unprecedented effort to undermine her jurisdiction and purloin vast sums through self-dealing.

The whole affair is even more sordid because Trump’s former defense lawyers are running the show at DOJ. That starts with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose bumbling performance when Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in connection with 2016 campaign wrongdoing did not seem to harm the lawyer’s career prospects. How can a DOJ headed by the likes of Blanche be expected to fairly resolve the president’s claims? It cannot, of course.

If you are thinking this whole depraved situation could not possibly get any worse, think again. 

Thursday brought revelations that former DOJ ethics counsel Joseph Tirrell counseled Blanche that under the ethics laws he should not be involved in anything involving the personal issues of his former client. As a former White House ethics czar, I certainly agree. Though the American people are not privy to who is doing the negotiations over this latest Trump settlement, Blanche should immediately disclose whether he has had any involvement in anything personally relating to Trump.

As you Contrarians are well-aware, corruption has been a hallmark of Trump’s second term, but this cascade of scandal after scandal is in a category of its own. It all amounts to the most extreme example of self-dealing we’ve seen yet. As Trump makes the lives of everyday Americans more expensive by continuing the war in Iran and with higher tariffs, he is trying to shake down the American taxpayer for vast sums. No wonder consumer sentiment is hitting an all-time low.

With the support of your paid subscriptions, we have been sounding the alarm on this pattern of brazen corruption for months—and fighting it. In fact, we filed a complaint in November, requesting that the DOJ inspector general investigate the department’s potential $230 million settlement with Trump after he reportedly filed the claims related to the documents. As we described in our complaint, even Trump admitted, “It’s interesting, because I’m the one that makes a decision, right?... [I]t’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

-The Contrarian

(White House photo)

Avarice, Fraud, Hypocrisy, and Revenge

Vice-President J.D. Vance was in Maine today to tout what the Trump administration claims is its push to combat fraud in public services. Vance blamed Democrats for fraud in Medicaid programs and vowed that the Trump administration would stop such fraud by refusing to distribute funds to states that were not cooperating with the federal government’s anti-fraud efforts. He announced yesterday the administration intends to withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California.

This alleged push against fraud is part of an old playbook the Republicans have used since at least 2000 in which they accuse the Democrats of their own weak points and misdeeds.

This play was often associated with Republican strategist Karl Rove, but in 2024, Caroline Wazer of Snopes noted that it is most usually associated with Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. Accusing opponents of what you, yourself, are doing, muddies the waters and makes it hard for real accusations against you for the same thing to stick.

Experts say fraud in federal programs is a real problem but that it is carried out primarily by transnational criminal organizations, not by individual recipients. Republican rhetoric claims a high rate of “improper payments,” but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services itself stresses that “improper payment measurement is not a measure of fraud.”

Rather, that term identifies payments where the paperwork provided by the state or provider was incomplete. Those numbers have been high recently because the government allowed states greater flexibility during the Covid-19 public health emergency.

According to the nonpartisan Maine Center for Economic Policy, MaineCare is overseen by both state and federal agencies, and the most recent federal review found that only about 0.1% of total program spending was in incorrect payments.

Indeed, last month, Reed Shaw of Just Security noted that the administration’s claim to be rooting out fraud appears simply to be a new way to punish perceived political enemies that might have a better chance of getting through the courts than the administration’s previous attempts did.

Accusing Democrats of fraud will also accomplish the political goal of muddying the waters to make it harder for voters to see that the Trump administration is the most corrupt U.S. administration in history. And concern about voters’ perceptions of corruption must be uppermost in the minds of administration advisors right now, since new Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Trump ally Viktor Orbán was driven in large part by voters’ fury at Orbán’s corruption.

Muddying the waters for voters is the best the Trump administration can hope for because, for all the administration’s claims to be fighting fraud, Trump’s corruption is mind-boggling.

He has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general—the people key to oversight—and in 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse. Matthew Purdy and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times noted in March that in both terms as of March 2026, Trump has also pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.

Steven Greenhouse of The Guardian reminded readers today that in January, David D. Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker reported that the Trumps have pocketed about $4 billion, primarily through cryptocurrency enterprises.

Greenhouse notes that Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran, and that the Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”

Even as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is acting as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East, he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund overseen by Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has already invested $2 billion with Kushner.

And then there are Trump’s vanity projects to remake the national capital. As Greenhouse notes, corporations and billionaires have dropped millions of dollars in donations for Trump’s ballroom where the East Wing used to be and his proposed presidential library in Miami.

In December 2025, Karen Yourish, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Charlie Smart of the New York Times estimated that Trump had raked in more than $2 billion for his projects or causes, more than half a billion of it from 346 people who each gave at least $250,000. Some of those people have received presidential pardons, others have been given jobs, and all have received access to the president.

On May 11, Jonathan Allen, Peter Nicholas, Matt Dixon, Henry J. Gomez, and Allan Smith of NBC News reported that Trump is using the planned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to be held on his birthday on the White House lawn as a new way for donors to funnel money to him. Although the UFC is paying for the event—and expects to lose as much as $30 million on it—and although tickets are technically free, Trump is picking who gets most of the tickets.

Sponsorship packages that include ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more. Neither the White House nor the UFC would comment on where the money is going. A Republican lobbyist told the NBC News journalists: “It’s basically been added to the list of approved entities to give undisclosed money to and get credit with Trump. They are raising a sh*t ton of money and have used it as another unofficial vehicle for corporate donors to give and gain favor with Trump.”

And now Trump is in China on a state visit on which he took along seventeen CEOs of companies—many of which do business in China—including billionaires Elon Musk and Tim Cook of Apple. 

Together, the members of the delegation are worth more than a trillion dollars. Trump also took his son Eric, who runs the family business. As economist Paul Krugman said today, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”

On Tuesday a group of Miami residents sued Trump, his library fund, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Miami Dade College and its trustees, and Florida officials to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.

Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported Tuesday that the Department of Justice was working with Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax returns from thousands of wealthy individuals to the media. The Department of Justice and Trump were eager to settle before the judge in the case could rule on whether the case was valid, a decision that could easily go against Trump since he was both the plaintiff and, as the person overseeing the IRS, the defendant in the lawsuit.

This evening, Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin of ABC News reported that Trump is in talks to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the government’s establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate those of Trump’s allies who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s alleged “weaponization” of the Department of Justice.

Those eligible for payments from this taxpayer-funded account would include nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of shortly after he took office in January 2025. While Trump himself will probably be barred from direct payments, entities associated with him will not be.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the ABC News reporters: “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

—Heather Cox Richardson