My Blood Is Boiling

This is the most flagrantly, staggeringly, obscenely corrupt thing that Trump has ever done in office. I have in my hand what purports to be the settlement of Trump's claims against the IRS for the disclosure of his tax agreements. That is a lie. That is a fraud on the American people.

What Trump is doing here is creating an illegal fund of billions of dollars to pay out whomever he chooses, including and especially the traitors who breached the capital and tried to overturn the election to turn it over in Trump's favor. My blood is boiling. This is a new low for this administration. And this is an administration that has been rife with corruption and illegality, but this is probably the worst thing that they have done so far.

Now, suffice to say, the president cannot take taxpayer money and give it to whomever he wants. But this unbelievably ironically named anti-weaponization fund is exactly that. He's going to pay out his friends, his family, and domestic terrorists. And that's just who we know about. I'm frankly running out of adjectives. This is theft. This is corruption. This is treason.

If he gets away with this, there are simply no more limits, at least with respect to what Trump can do with taxpayer money. If he can pay out billions with a B to his cronies without any real oversight, I don't know. Are we done as a country? At best, this is Orbanesque. But this is frankly verging into Putin territory. And of course, the corruption cherry on top of the corruption Sunday is that Trump is personally ending and forbaying all audits and suits into his businesses and his family's finances. Oh, and the government is issuing him an apology as well. Wonderful.

Now, we're talking about this as if it is a legal settlement to the claims that he had against the government that he has control over. But it is not. This is not a settlement. This has about as much to do with a legal settlement as a shoe horn has to do with a French horn. I'm reluctant to even talk about the legalities or the legal aspects of this because there's nothing legal about this. There was no process here. There was no judicial review. There was no uh decision by a factfinder or a jury. This is simply Trump taking power and paying it out to whomever he wants to.

That being said, the fig leaf that they are using to cover up their own manifest corruption and illegality is that this was related to a demand that Trump had for $10 billion related to the 2020 disclosure of his tax returns by a contractor at the IRS. Now, we are in the process of writing and filming a video that goes into much more detail about the legal aspects and really more relevant here, the illegal aspects of what's happening. That's going to come out in a few days. But suffice to say, Trump's suit was unbelievably bogus. Again, you can sue anyone for anything and claim that you're entitled to however much money you want. But in that case, in the best of circumstances, a disclosure of those kinds of tax returns would be limited to $1,000 per disclosure. And the statute of limitations is 2 years, which has long since elapsed.

Oh, and by the way, the president who was in control of the IRS at the time that those tax returns were disclosed was President Trump himself. Oh, and the irony here is that yes, while leaking tax returns is illegal, the only reason the American people didn't already have Trump's tax returns is that he refused to turn them over like every single other presidential candidate does as a matter of course when they run for president. And of course, which he pledged to eventually release and never did, but he was probably withholding them because he was looking down the barrel of hundreds of millions of dollars of fines related to his tax crimes, including double dipping crimes which he has now given himself immunity. And those crimes and the tax crimes of his family members and businesses were not even part of his suit against the IRS. He's just throwing them in because why not?

The New York Times is reporting that the IRS actually issued a 20-page report on how bogus this suit was. This suit was a joke. And frankly, on this channel, we treated it as such because it was so stupid and so brazen. And frankly, we thought the worst that was going to come from it was that it was just going to be tossed out of court and it was going to waste taxpayer resources. My god, how wrong we were.

But what became legitimately interesting is that the judge in that case realized that there was a problem. Trump was not only the plaintiff in this case, but also the defendant. He controlled the IRS and the Department of Justice. And so the judge appointed what are called amicus to discuss whether there was something called a case in controversy. You can't just sue yourself. You can't collude with a friend to sue over something and get a payout and get a payout when there's no real controversy and there's no adversity. And the judge correctly realized that. And because the Trump Department of Justice couldn't be trusted to actually defend that suit, they appointed an amicus to discuss that particular issue.

Oh, and by the way, the entire loadstone of right-wing judicial theory right now rests on what's called the unitary executive theory, which purports that there is no distinction between the president and anyone in the executive branch, which even by that particular theory meant that Trump was suing himself and absolutely could not have recovered from the public coffers from his bogus BS case. But the fact that Trump sued himself as the sitting president is a scandal in and of itself. The fact that the interim head of the Department of Justice, Todd Blanch, is Trump's personal lawyer, who should have been conflicted out of that position, that is a scandal. The fact that we even got to this point alone shows us how low the bar has gotten. Trump's lawsuit had about as much legal basis as your average sovereign citizen nonsense who claims that they can drive a car without a license or isn't required to pay taxes.

As you can tell, I'm angry. And what's worse is that right-wing news sources are simply ignoring this because it is absolutely indefensible. But honestly, I don't think people understand how bad this really is. This settlement creates a slush fund that will be controlled by a five-member board, which of course is appointed by Trump. He can add or remove members as he sees fit. There will effectively be no oversight whatsoever. And by the terms of this settlement, they can basically choose to hand out money to whomever they want under whatever criteria they want. And you can bet that they will pay out whoever Trump wants. There are no real guardrails here. This is pure patronage for a king. The language allows the board to pay whoever they want. They can pay Trump if he wants to under any criteria. But make no mistake, President Trump is raping the public treasury for his own gratification. And this slush fund agreement, it's a troll. It purports to claim that Trump is not being paid out. But if you give someone an account with billions of dollars in it and they have control as to how it's paid, even if that account isn't in their name, if they have sole control over it, it's their money. And that's exactly what they've done here.

Now, we don't know exactly who will be compensated. I mean, it's not even compensation, bribed. But we do know for sure that it will include some or all of the January 6ers, the terrorists who tried to overthrow the government. Of course, they were pardoned and that is an unfathomable scandal alone. But effectively what this committee is going to do is they are going to pay out the people who tried to overthrow the government to put Trump in power. These are convicted criminals. The fact that they were later pardoned by Trump doesn't change the fact that these are treasonous pieces of excrement who tried to stab our democracy in its heart. Trump has already paid out millions of dollars to traitors like Michael Flynn who filed another bogus lawsuit. But this doesn't even require people to file a lawsuit. You can bet that some or all of the people who invaded the capital on January 6 are going to get massive paydays.

Now, in a press release, Todd Blanch said that the settlement fund was going to include $1.7776 billion to pay out whomever this committee wants. And of course, everyone in the media breathlessly reported that as the number, approximately $1.8 billion with a B dollars to convicted criminals among other people that Trump wants to give patronage to. But here's the thing. Nowhere in this settlement does it mention that dollar amount. And the particular fund that they're pulling from, one of the DOJ's settlement funds is an ongoing appropriation. But there's not necessarily a limit. And certainly there is no limit in this settlement agreement that limits them to $1.8 billion. And like I said, the terms are so ambiguous that they can pay out whoever they want. A billion dollars for Don Jr., sure, he was targeted by lawfare. $500 million for election tampering Tina Peters. Great. She was pardoned. $10 billion for the Republican National Convention. Of course. A billion dollars for rebuilding Trump Tower. Why not? Of course Obama did something that requires remuneration. $800 million for Russian hackers. Absolutely. Step right up and get the money. Just make up a claim that says you were targeted by some past administration. There is absolutely no real criteria that is enforceable and it's just going to be whatever Trump wants and whomever Trump wants to give money to. He's going to pay some of the people who invaded the capital and tried to turn the election in his favor. And he might be prepaying the next people. He could say, "Hey, as long as you use this money to go buy a bunch of AR-15s and be in Washington next January 6th, great. Go out and do it." As if pardoning the people who committed crimes for Trump's benefit weren't bad enough. Now he's going to pay people to do it in the future. I just I simply do not have words for this. These people are brown shirts. They are Nazis. They are Trump's personal Praetorian guard and now they get taxpayer funding. Congratulations.

And even if it were limited just to $1.8 billion. That is a staggering amount of money. With that, you could fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Voice of America and still have enough left over to fully fund the National Endowment for the Arts. I think it's hard for lay people to grasp just how much money a single billion dollars, let alone $1.8 billion, let alone an unlimited amount of money that is not defined in the settlement agreement. And this was always the plan. They have been discussing a payout for the January 6ers for over a year. They just happen to use this as a vehicle for maximum secrecy and a fig leaf of a legal process.

Under the terms of this agreement, all of this will be confidential. There will be no accountability to the American people. We will not know who gets this money if this is allowed to go through. Uh we won't know how much money they get. At most, there will be a report given to Todd Blanch as the acting head of the Department of Justice. But he is not bound, nor do I ever expect that he would release any of those reports in the future. And of course, this whole commission expires right before the next president takes power.

I mean, I probably don't need to tell you that all of this is flagrantly illegal. The general counsel for the US Treasury, who was appointed by Trump and confirmed by Republican Senate, resigned as a result of this incredible document of corruption. But yes, I will make the obvious point. This is illegal. Uh this kind of action would require an appropriation from Congress, which it obviously does not have. The Anti-Deficiency Act, which we've talked about a lot, and which Trump has violated an uncounted number of times, makes it a felony to dole out money that has not been appropriated by Congress. And no, I don't believe that the appropriation of the Department of Justice uh covers what they are trying to do with this document.

But let me put this on record to anyone who might be working in the government who might be tempted to follow through with this settlement. Providing any funds as a result of this settlement is a felony. And every single person involved in the distribution of those funds can and should go to jail as a result. And in fact, on behalf of the American people, I think we need to demand of the next Congress that that should be a pledge of every single member of Congress that they will put anyone in the executive branch who had a hand in this that they go to jail.

This is honestly 10 times worse than Watergate. French aristocrats found their necks in a guillotine for far less than this. This is not hyperbole. It's really this bad. We should all be in the streets on this one. I just don't know what else to say.