Donald Trump last year amassed one big beautiful rap sheet of scandal and criminality, with multiple instances of corruption that made Teapot Dome look quaint. But the president’s bogus new “settlement” with his own administration’s IRS, which he had sued in January for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns in 2020, hits scorching new heights of depravity. The deal’s contours were bad enough when it looked like Trump was simply going to take a small fortune of taxpayer money and line his own pockets. But that was last week: The new plan is for $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to be set aside as a slush fund, which Trump will effectively control, to pay out to January 6 insurrectionists and political cronies that he believes were wronged back when the Department of Justice wasn’t his mobbed-up plaything. Some of the worst people in America are already lining up for payouts.There are plenty of ways to describe this arrangement. Call it cartoon villainy. Call it criminal. For certain, call this an utterly impeachable offense. Also call this very worrisome: There is a non-zero chance that Trump will simply get away with it, now that corrupt elites dominate American life with absolute impunity. For those with any vested interest in restoring democracy and clearing out the Augean stables of Trumpism, how we respond to this is very important.The Trump White House is a kleptocratic organ, pure and simple—one that increasingly resembles authoritarian regimes around the world. “This new slush fund is no different than what we see in other kleptocracies,” Casey Michel, frequent TNR contributor and author of the forthcoming book United States of Oligarchy, told me. “It’s a ruling figure creating a new pot of wealth that they can use for whatever they want—in this case, paying off a bunch of insurrectionists who Trump can now transform into his own personal paramilitary, without any oversight or checks whatsoever. It’s something we’ve never seen in U.S. history—but is perfectly familiar to those who study autocracy around the world.”There is, however, a key distinction between Trump and the scores of foreign kleptocrats that Michel has spent years studying: “The only difference here is that most foreign kleptocrats at least try to hide their tracks—instead of broadcasting them to the world, like we’re seeing with Trump.” While most criminals endeavor to keep the newspapers from finding out about their intention to commit crimes, Trump does it in plain sight—either because he’s incredibly stupid or because the Supreme Court has told him he’s wholly immune from prosecution. (It’s probably both.)But the newspapers’ early coverage of the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund is troubling. If sanewashing was last year’s problem in the political press, sinwashing might be the au courant media malady. The initial coverage from The New York Times suggested that the scheme merely “could funnel money to Trump allies,” even though this was its expressed purpose. The news department also couldn’t bring itself to call it a slush fund, instead drafting “critics” to say what is plainly and objectively true (the paper’s editorial board at least named it appropriately). Elsewhere, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal found a useful euphemism, referring to the settlement’s arrangement as merely “unusual” instead of nakedly criminal. (TNR’s headline, if you’re keeping score, nailed it: “Trump Just Launched a Taxpayer-Funded $1.8 Billion MAGA Slush Fund.”) So I’m concerned that when Democrats return to power, the media will either be an impediment or an enemy to any effort to put things right. But at least that effort is kicking off right away. Representative Jamie Raskin told TNR’s Greg Sargent he is planning to “introduce a bill that would block the fund and other future efforts like it.” He’ll be doing so with the full support of party leadership, who will seek to bring the vote to the House floor over the Republican majority’s objections via a discharge petition. While such a maneuver will require some GOP support, Republicans in the House have in recent weeks broken ranks on the disclosure of the Epstein files—and a few have defected from the party line on funding Trump’s grifty ballroom, as well, likely killing the $1 billion that Republicans had planned to allocate to it in their ICE-funding reconciliation bill. Meanwhile, HuffPost’s Jen Bendery reports that Senator Chris Van Hollen will be launching a similar effort in the Senate, amending the reconciliation bill to prevent January 6ers—some of whom assaulted the Capitol Police officers who protect these politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike—from obtaining money through this slush fund. Taken as a whole, these efforts tick a lot of boxes for those, like me, who bemoan Democrats’...
