The Presidential Slush Fund

Donald is using taxpayer money to reward insurrectionists, protect himself from oversight, and turn the Department of Justice into his personal ATM.

January 6th Riot on the Capital. Photo Credit: CNN

It is difficult to express just how egregiously corrupt, this $1.8 billion so called anti-weaponization fund truly is.

To put this in context, Donald sued his own Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion over allegations that the IRS leaked his tax returns. The fact that the case was even allowed to move toward a settlement is itself deeply corrupt, because Donald is effectively the boss of the very agency he is suing. The level of self dealing involved here is extraordinary.

Donald’s Department of Justice, currently run by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of the most breathtakingly compliant, sycophantic, and corrupt figures in our government, agreed to the deal. Blanche appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee this morning to defend the decision to hand over nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to a fund controlled by Donald’s allies and co-conspirators.

Donald responded,

Well, it’s been very well received… I know very little about it. I wasn’t involved in the whole creation of it and the negotiation, but this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated, horribly treated. It’s anti weaponization. They’ve been weaponized…I mean, it was a terrible period of time in the history of our country and they worked on it. I know the Justice Department has really been working on it very hard. There’s been numerous other occasions over the years where things like this have been done, but these were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it and they’re getting reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer.

Of course, nobody in Donald’s mind has ever been treated more unfairly than Donald himself.

But let us be very clear about who he is talking about. He is referring to the people who participated in the insurrection he incited against the United States government. These are the same people he already pardoned or had their sentences commuted.

Todd Blanche was later questioned directly about the fund and whether violent offenders, including those who assaulted Capitol Police officers, would be eligible to receive taxpayer money.

This is what Senator Chris Van Hollen asked Todd Blanche today:

Van Hollen: Mr. Attorney General, this is an outrageous unprecedented slush fund that you set up. Simple question. Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this one?

Blanche: As it makes plain, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they’re a victim of weaponization.

Van Hollen: Are there going to be rules that say that if you’ve assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible? Why not make that a rule?

Blanche: Because I’m not one of the commissioners setting up the rules. I expect that there will be rules.

Van Hollen: You’re appointing four of the five members, aren’t you, Mr. Attorney General?

Blanche: I am appointing all five.

Senator Van Hollen can hope for accountability all he wants, but Blanche made something very clear. He will personally appoint all five members overseeing the distribution of nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money.

That means a hand selected board, chosen by Todd Blanche and almost certainly with Donald’s direct input, will decide who receives the money, with no transparency and no accountability.

This is a slush fund.

It is yet another mechanism to enrich Donald, his allies, and his political movement while punishing everybody else.

To make the arrangement even more corrupt, part of the deal reportedly blocks the IRS from auditing Donald and members of his family moving forward. It is difficult to imagine something more blatant in what is supposed to be a functioning democracy. But that is the point, The United States is no longer functioning like one.

The corrupt and illegitimate supermajority on the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that they view Donald’s presidency as imperial. He exists beyond the rule of law. At this point, it is difficult to argue there even is a meaningful rule of law left in America when people like Todd Blanche are running the Department of Justice.

Republicans in Congress have the power to stop this. They will do nothing. So Donald will once again get away with another grift, another theft, another abuse of power, while the American people are expected to simply accept it.

Part of what makes this so maddening is that all of it exists solely for Donald’s benefit. One of the most useless and undeserving men on the planet continues to have everything handed to him despite accomplishing nothing of value.

The pattern has repeated itself for his entire life.

As soon as Donald graduated from college, he went to work for Fred Trump. At the age of twenty four, despite the fact that Fred Trump Jr. had already spent more than a decade with the company, Donald was handed the presidency of the business, complete with luxury apartments, million dollar bonuses, and a chauffeur driven limousine.

When Donald decided he wanted his own real estate projects, Fred Trump used his wealth, political connections, and influence to make that happen.

Then Donald entered the casino business against his father’s wishes and proceeded to drive three casinos into bankruptcy while filing for bankruptcy many times. The only reason he survived financially was because Fred Trump continued funneling him enormous sums of money, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in today’s terms.

Even after those failures, banks kept him afloat, not because he was successful, but because they believed preserving the Trump brand was the only way to recover their losses. The banks placed Donald on an allowance so he could continue maintaining the illusion of wealth and success.

At one point, Donald was reportedly receiving roughly $450,000 a month from lenders simply so he could preserve the image of being rich.

Then Fred Trump died, and Donald pushed his siblings into selling the family empire quickly because he desperately needed cash. He received another massive financial windfall and burned through that money too because he is not just a terrible businessman, he is profoundly irresponsible.

Then NBC stepped in and rescued him with The Apprentice.

Eventually, in search of yet another grift, Donald ran for president. Unfortunately, enough people in this country decided that putting him in the Oval Office was a good idea.

What Donald and the people around him learned during his first term was how far they could push the system before anyone stopped them. Now in his second term, just in the last year and a half alone, the damage done to this country has surpassed much of what happened during his first term.

At every stage there were people capable of stopping him. There still are. But because of greed, fear, selfishness, ambition, cowardice, and the endless pursuit of power and approval, they refuse to act.

The truth is that Donald is profoundly weak. His greed exposes that weakness constantly. He needs more money, more validation, more loyalty because there is a black hole inside him that can never be filled.

Every single day he reveals himself to be exactly what he has always been: a frightened little boy desperate for approval and incapable of ever having enough. That is not strength.

And yet he continues to be enabled over and over again by people who know exactly who and what he is. They are complicit. They are guilty. And someday they must be held accountable.

Because this is a very dark moment in American history.

The President of the United States is not merely committing crimes against the American people while escaping consequences. He is doing exactly what he so often accuses everybody else of doing.

He is destroying this country.