But Trump does not just embody a particular form of the presidency. He has pioneered a new one. You can see this clearly in his latest act of corruption, a $1.776 billion (ha, get it?) settlement fund for those supposedly harmed by the so-called weaponization of government under the Biden administration. The fund was created after Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for its failure to prevent a leak during Trump’s first term that revealed the details of his tax returns.
Trump is infamously litigious, filing frivolous suits over any and every slight, real or perceived. But this lawsuit was especially ridiculous, even by his degraded standards. First and most important, Trump effectively sued himself — he was president when the I.R.S. leak took place. It is also the case that for a lawsuit to move forward, there must be a conflict between the two parties. But where was the conflict between the personal lawyers acting on Trump’s behalf and the government lawyers acting on Trump’s behalf?
Last month, the judge overseeing the case, Kathleen M. Williams of the Southern District of Florida, ordered both sets of lawyers to explain whether the two sides were “sufficiently adverse” or this was just an excuse for self-dealing on the part of the president. The Justice Department’s announcement of the settlement fund last week seems to answer the question, especially when one digs into the details.
The money, which comes from a Justice Department fund for settling cases, will be controlled by a five-person board appointed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and a former defense lawyer for the president. The board will have the authority to use the cash to “pay for per diems, administrative services, funds, facilities, staff, travel and other support services as may be necessary.” Neither Blanche nor the Justice Department have announced criteria for disbursements, but Vice President JD Vance has made it clear that Jan. 6 rioters and those convicted of election interference — such as Tina Peters in Colorado, whose sentence was recently commuted in a much-derided decision by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat — might, on a case-by-case basis, be potential beneficiaries. Trump, of course, will be able to fire members of the board at will.
The most egregious part of the agreement, revealed this week, is that the I.R.S. is required to drop all audits of Trump and his family, permanently shielding them from any scrutiny of their business deals and financial arrangements. It means, in effect, that neither Trump nor his family is obligated to pay a full share of taxes, or pay at all, since who would know if they didn’t? This comes in the wake of last week’s release of financial disclosure forms that show that trades have been made on the president’s behalf that are worth at least $220 million, in companies he has either promoted or whose executives he has hosted at the White House.
