Trump Just Created An Unconstitutional $1.776 Billion Loyalty Rewards Program For MAGA

from the 10-insurrections-get-your-11th-free dept

We discussed the rumor of this on Friday, but it’s now real: Donald Trump has handed himself a $1.776 billion fund of taxpayer money — unappropriated by Congress — to dole out to friends in the MAGA movement who claim they were mistreated by the Biden administration, but with no judicial review over such claims.

The Fund will have the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants. Submission of a claim is voluntary. There are no partisan requirements to file a claim.  Any money left when the Fund ceases operations will revert to the Federal Government.

The Fund will receive $1.776 billion and will come from the judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation allowing DOJ to settle and pay cases. On a quarterly basis, the Fund shall send a report to the Attorney General outlining who has received relief and what form of relief was awarded.

What will the fund be used for? To pay anyone on Team MAGA — including, in theory, January 6th insurrectionists — who claim the Biden administration “weaponized” the government to target them. Many of these claims are simply not true. January 6th insurrectionists were arrested and convicted for actually breaking the law. But now they get to ask Trump for money, and the evidentiary standard appears to be “trust me, bro” and a red MAGA hat.

Let’s first dispense with the most obvious bit of the charade: the idea that this is actually related to the “settlement” of Trump’s already corrupt bullshit lawsuit against the IRS. That’s how this is being presented, but this is entirely separate. Trump needed to drop that lawsuit in order to end it before a judge called bullshit on the fact that he was negotiating with himself to take $10 billion from American taxpayers.

As for the actual “fund” everything about it is about as corrupt as you can imagine. This is impeachment-worthy — and not in a partisan way. Republicans should be as offended by this as anyone else, if they actually (I know… I know…) believe in things like rule of law and fiscal responsibility.

The actual details here should raise so many red flags. First, as part of this illegal attempt to route around Congress’ power of the purse, they’re taking the money out of the Treasury Department’s “Judgment Fund.” But that fund is clearly designed to pay out the results of duly litigated court cases against the government — not a board of Trump’s friends deciding who gets a check. But here, it’s just a group of MAGA insiders who get to choose:

The Fund will consist of five members appointed by the Attorney General. One Member will be chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. The President can remove any member, but a replacement must be chosen the same way as the replaced member was selected.

So, the fund is clearly in service of Donald Trump’s whims, not anyone else’s. We already have his personal lawyer (who has shown a long history of obeying Trump’s orders) as the acting Attorney General, and the fact that Congress only gets to “consult” on one member of the committee, and anyone can be removed by Trump at any moment makes it abundantly clear that this fund is solely around to pay off Trump’s loyal fans, who have a long history of claiming imagined grievances against the Biden administration, which they will now seek to cash in on.

The fund also, notably, will be put into a private account that (according to the settlement) the US government has no control over and no liability for.

Once the funds are deposited into the Designated Account, the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.

This appears to be setting things up so that a future government (or a court) cannot claw back the money once it is delivered from the Treasury into this slush fund, let alone after it is then handed out to anyone on Team MAGA who makes a claim from the fund.

Also, the fund is set up to “close” before the next administration comes into office. How convenient.

The Fund shall cease processing claims no later than December 1, 2028.

The DOJ is claiming that this fund is no different than the Keepseagle fund under the Obama administration:

There is legal precedent for such a Fund, most notably the “Keepseagle” case where the Obama Administration created a $760 million fund to redress various claims alleging racism against the federal government over a period of decades.

In Keepseagle, hundreds of millions of dollars remaining in the fund were distributed to non-profits and NGOs that never made claims, whereas any money remaining in The Anti-Weaponization Fund will revert to the federal government. The Obama DOJ settled by putting $680 million from the judgment fund into a bank account for a single claims administrator to dole out. In Keepseagle the remaining money—which ended up being over $300 million—was distributed to the entities that had not even submitted claims.

This is blatantly revisionist history. The Keepseagle settlement was approved by a court in response to a class action lawsuit. Here, this fund, is being created in a manner deliberately to avoid having the court review it. It also paid people out for a specific, and verifiable harm: Native American farmers who were denied a farm loan from the USDA during a specific period of time who were eligible for that loan. The lawsuit was because the USDA had deliberately denied those loans to Native American farmers, while giving them to white farmers.

In that case, there was a clear harm, a clear way to delineate who was harmed, and court oversight of the process. In this case, there is literally none of that. Anyone arguing that Keepseagle is the same thing as this slush fund is either being deliberately dishonest or hasn’t read the basic facts. Even well known conservative lawyers like Ed Whelan (a former Scalia clerk) is calling out that this fund is highly questionable:

The fund itself is an abuse of power and clearly unconstitutional. As constitutional lawyer (and now Representative) Jamie Raskin noted last week in an interview with the New Republic, if the fund is used to pay off January 6 insurrectionists, it also likely violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which has a prohibition on the US government paying for those who engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the US:

There’s still more. Raskin notes that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the government from assuming any “obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Raskin said that if this fund hands money to the January 6 rioters, Trump will be “using federal taxpayer dollars to compensate people who participated in insurrection.”

The “imagine if Biden did this” test is almost beside the point here (though, seriously, just imagine how people, including Democrats, would react). We’re past the moment where consistency of principle was the relevant standard. What matters is that $1.776 billion in unappropriated taxpayer money is being routed through a board of Trump loyalists, into an account the government has explicitly disclaimed responsibility for, on a clock that runs out before the next administration takes office.

The “settlement” framing is just the bow on top. The $1.776 billion slush fund for MAGA’s worst is the point.

Filed Under: anti-weaponization fund, congress, corruption, donald trump, ed whelan, insurrection, irs, jamie raskin, slush fund, weaponization