Donald Trump steals $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to pay off seditionists for trying to overturn the 2020 election in his favor

I want to emphasize that this is by orders of magnitude the biggest financial scandal in the history of the American presidency, with the notable exception of some other things Trump has done.

The Trump administration announced on Monday the establishment of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department, creating a potential pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to his allies and supporters.

The highly unusual plan — slammed by critics as a political slush fund — came after President Trump withdrew his lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion against the Internal Revenue Service, an apparent effort to skirt oversight by the judge in the case as he moves toward arranging a fund to funnel taxpayer money to his allies and supporters.

The fund, with its symbolic dollar value, is intended “to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” a department spokesman said in statement.

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”

The dismissal and creation of the fund is the latest legal turn in an extraordinary attempt by Mr. Trump to win billions of dollars in damages from a government agency he controls.

Mr. Trump’s withdrawing his suit was a remarkable end-run around the legal system, effectively stripping Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who has been overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, of her normal role in approving a formal settlement agreement. By dismissing the case in its entirety, Mr. Trump essentially freed his hand to reach a deal with administration officials without any judicial oversight.

Judge Williams had been considering dismissing Mr. Trump’s suit on her own because he effectively controls both his personal lawyers bringing the complaint and the government lawyers who are supposed to respond to it.

She had ordered the Justice Department, which has yet to make an appearance or filing in the case, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers to brief her by Wednesday to explain whether they were actually in opposition — or were colluding to achieve a mutually agreeable outcome.

In their filing on Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said their dismissal meant that “no judicial analysis is appropriate” for the suit.

It will be interesting to see what further laws get broken in the course of raiding whatever DOJ funds are used to pay off these traitors, for the eventual benefit of the biggest traitor of all (The government has money appropriated on a regular basis for settling lawful claims against the government, but this here is straight up embezzlement).

Possibly the sleaziest aspect of this, although it’s really hard to choose just one, is the dismissal of the suit that would have allowed a judge to refuse to sign off on this brazen thievery. This is basically Trump ordering his own employees to pay off a bunch of his criminal supporters for having been investigated for their criming.

The important thing to remember is that every single Republican officeholder and voter in America owns all of this.

It also strikes me that the title of this post is simply a prosaic description of the transaction, and at the same time something that can’t be acknowledged by the political and legal systems, because it is also a complete indictment of those systems.