Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant?

[dalton99a]

Last edited Wed May 20, 2026, 04:07 PM - Edit history (1)

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/opinion/trump-doj-slush-fund-criminals-corruption.html



Trump’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Will Benefit Criminals and the President Himself
May 20, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET
By The Editorial Board

Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

The fund’s existence is a story of political self-dealing. It is nominally the product of a flimsy personal lawsuit that Mr. Trump filed this year against the Internal Revenue Service, which he oversees, over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. That lawsuit led to an absurd negotiation, in which the lawyers on one side worked for Mr. Trump the citizen and those on the other side worked for Mr. Trump the president.

Adding to absurdity, the government lawyers reported to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, who previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A federal judge in Miami helping to oversee the case, Kathleen Williams, pointed out that the two sides were not adversaries, which called into question the process. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the situation shortly after filing the suit by saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”

Yet the talks proceeded because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department was in charge. Unsurprisingly, they led to a deal that was extremely favorable to him.

...


https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/politics/trump-fund-legal-questions.html

Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund Tests Constitutional Limits
The deal the president reached with his own subordinates relies on a mechanism created by Congress that legal experts had warned was subject to manipulation.
By Adam Liptak
May 20, 2026 Updated 1:25 p.m. ET

In January, on a flight to his Florida club Mar-a-Lago, President Trump mused about his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he said.

Mr. Trump is a tough negotiator, and, looking in the mirror, he faced an equally tenacious adversary. But the president managed to work out a deal with himself on Monday, one as novel and brazen as the process that spawned it.

He dropped his lawsuit, extracting from his own government a promise to create a $1.8 billion fund to dole out to his political allies. A day later, in a curious addendum, Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and the acting attorney general, purported to immunize him from lawsuits arising from a great many things, not least his tax liabilities.

The government of the United States, Mr. Blanche wrote, is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing claims against Mr. Trump involving “lawfare and/or weaponization” or tax returns.

The whole enterprise was a jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system, raising what legal experts said were profound questions about presidential power. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, they said, Mr. Trump will have managed simultaneously to thwart Congress’s power of the purse and the ability of the courts to police the separation of powers.

...

[Blues Heron]

1. What about the victims of Trumpfare? They need a trillion dollar fund for that

[3catwoman3]

2. No.

[MustLoveBeagles]

3. No

Even W & Cheney weren't this bad 😔

[kentuck]

4. Their greed is the cherry on top.

There should be no doubt.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-Trump's absurd choice for 'the most violent thing' he has seen in politics

When the president uses the word “violence,” he often means it as a synonym for stuff he doesn’t like.

Just so we're clear, when he talks about "the most violent thing" he's ever seen in politics, he's *not* talking about those who violently attacked the Capitol in his name, while violently clashing with police officers.

He's instead talking about efforts to hold them and their allies accountable.

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-05-20T19:01:54.673Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-anti-weaponization-fund-most-violent-jan-6-biden

True to form, the Republican’s answer meandered for a while and included dubious claims about his lack of involvement in the arrangement, before he got to the heart of the matter.

Q: Do you have a response to people who critical of your settlement?

TRUMP: It was the most violent thing I've ever seen in politics -- what they did. And yet if I say, 'let's look at this one,' they say, 'Weaponization!' We think anybody involved should partake. You're talking about peanuts.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-20T18:55:39.973Z

“People were destroyed,” Trump said, referring to his allies under the Biden administration. He added, “We’re reimbursing those people for their legal fees, and for their costs, and for anybody involved, but they destroyed people. … It was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen in politics, what they did.”

Just so we’re all clear about the context and relevant details, when the incumbent president identified “the most violent thing” he has ever seen in politics, he wasn’t talking about the insurrectionists who violently attacked the Capitol in his name while violently clashing with police officers as part of an unprecedented attack on American democracy.

Rather, Trump was instead talking about efforts to hold them and their allies accountable.

That’s utterly bonkers, though it was also a timely reminder that when Trump uses the word “violence,” he often means it as a synonym for stuff he doesn’t like....

If the president wants to take seriously the scourge of political violence, that would be a welcome change. But what Trump seems far more eager to do is redefine the word “violence” in ways that he thinks suit his partisan purposes.