Just two weeks ago the president who never stops impressing us with his corruptive instincts and self-serving interpretations of law and custom raised the bar like nobody’s ever seen before.  He went to court as a private citizen suing his own government for $10 billion in damages, then withdrew the suit in favor of the establishment of a multi-billion dollar fund he could control from the shadows that could make payments with taxpayer dollars (your taxes and mine) to anyone who claimed to have “victimized” by the Biden Justice Department, including the people convicted of crimes for storming the Capitol on January 6.  Turns out those “billion-dollar slush fund” headlines were too much, even for the cowed and subservient Republicans in Congress who had never before seen any Trump proposal they couldn’t love.  But so far, they still providing cover for another part of the “settlement” that’s just as corrupt and self-serving for you know who.

In the good news section, we have yesterday’s declaration by the acting attorney general “withdrawing a proposal to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, amid a revolt among Republicans who saw it as an ethical and political disaster.”  Even at that, though, the acting AG (and Trump’s former criminal lawyer) wouldn’t go as far as some members wanted.

Democrats repeatedly requested that Mr. [Todd] Blanche commit to rescind, in writing, his order creating the payout fund.

“You started it, you established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing,” said Representative Grace Meng, Democrat of New York.

“I’m not committing to put anything in writing,” he said, adding that he would abide by his word and would take the request under advisement.

So, won’t sign, but you can trust him?  Right.  Some Republicans senators trust him so much that today they’re considering writing a ban on the fund into law! [6/5 Editor’s note: they tried, but they did not succeed. Later today Justice Department filings in two courts stated the fund is not going forward; I’m still not convinced.]

And just because Blanche “promised” this bad idea would be canned does not, I think, mean we should trust that it will.  The Trumpists usually come up with a backup plan to get whatever crazy thing they want; they are not the kind to throw up their hands and whisper “oops, my bad.”

Still, on its face at this point, I finally see a glimmer of a sign that Trump can be stopped: by the citizens who react so viscerally to such a poorly-camouflaged grift, who then empower the paper tiger members of Congress to for once do their —-ing jobs and stand athwart a runaway Executive and shout “Stop!”  The only people who seem unhappy about this development are those January 6 offenders-turned-pardonees who thought they’d stumbled onto a way to monetize their treason.

Another good news part is that the federal judge who originally felt she had no choice but to let this plan go ahead has had a change of heart.  After three dozen former federal judges argued “that Mr. Trump’s settlement agreement raised serious questions about his ‘candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system,’” Judge Kathleen Williams re-opened the case to investigate allegations that the court was deceived through the misconduct of lawyers.  All of whom, you’ll recall – both sides – are Trump’s lawyers.  Words like “collusion” and “fraud upon the court” are being summoned.

Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled. When she closed it, she noted there was no “settlement of record,” but shortly after, the Justice Department released its agreement foreclosing the action.

In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”

She also wanted Mr. Trump’s lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”

(snip)

In their filing…the former judges claimed that Mr. Trump had improperly used his suit against the I.R.S. as a way to obtain “unlawful private benefits” for himself and his family, and to create a fund that would dole out taxpayer money “without constitutional or congressional authority.”

They also argued that the president had tried to shield the deal from judicial oversight by rushing a settlement and “short-circuiting” Judge Williams’s ability to examine its terms.

Now, it wouldn’t be much of a good news/bad news set up if I didn’t have at least one bad news item to point out.  And it comes from right in the middle of the good news about the Trump Administration’s “aw shucks” reversal of the plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay “victims” of political harassment by the Justice Department.  The Biden Justice Department only, of course.

But Mr. Blanche said he would leave in place [emphasis added] an order he signed last month that would, in effect, block the I.R.S. from investigating Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses for existing tax violations.

“Nothing has changed with that,” said Mr. Blanche, who added that the tax order would not shield Mr. Trump and his associates from future investigations.

Sleight of hand is a wonderful thing when used by magicians as entertainment, but it’s not so damn entertaining when our government distracts us with shouts of “nothing up my sleeve” while end-running Congress to legalize whatever tax evasion TFG might have committed in the past…you know, back in the time he gloated that not paying federal taxes “makes me smart.”

Trump and Republicans have offered zero clarity about the future of the other part of his slush-fund scheme: the grant of immunity from IRS scrutiny for Trump, his businesses, and his family members. Incredibly, this would “forever” bar IRS audits of past tax claims by the Trump clan or the Trump Organization. Democrats can try to make Republicans vote on that  towering act of corruption, which might prove politically even worse.

(snip)

Democrats tell me they’re moving to force votes in Congress that would effectively nullify the IRS immunity piece, as well. That provision is potentially an incredibly lucrative giveaway for Trump: It could benefit him to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. So one approach would be for Democrats to use “reconciliation”—the process that Republicans are using to pass the ICE funding, which enables Senate passage by simple majority—to push amendments that would nix Trump’s IRS immunity scam.

“We will do whatever we can to force a vote during the budget reconciliation process on this monarchical outrage and further plunder of the people,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, emails me. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that Democrats are set to push an amendment that will “revoke” Trump’s and his family’s “free rein to commit tax fraud.”

Here a complication arises. Now that Trump seems to have put his slush fund on hold, Senate Republicans may drop any effort to nix it via legislation from the reconciliation process entirely. If so, that could procedurally preclude Democrats from offering any amendments involving the IRS settlement—including one nixing Trump’s IRS immunity scam.

(snip)

Now imagine if the public broadly understood that Trump has ordered his Justice Department to reach a deal exempting himself—and his businesses and family members—from a good deal of IRS examination. This could personally and directly benefit Trump by saving him enormous sums of money while quite consciously placing him and his cronies above laws that the rest of us must live under.

That’s another level of self-dealing entirely. And Trump is flaunting it with great relish. OK, then: Democrats should do everything they possibly can to ensure that vulnerable Republican incumbents own every last little bit of it.

We all know – or certainly should know by now – that the only person Trump cares about is himself.  If he could finagle a couple billion dollars to buy the continuing fawning adoration of his supporters, that’s fine; but the one part of this whole agreement he won’t give up willingly is the order to protect himself from the IRS.