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You damn right nobody’s ever seen anything like this before

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Do I have this straight: the president as a private citizen sued a department of his own government for billions of dollars, then dropped the suit as the Justice Department announced a fund that gives (essentially) him control of $1.8 billion to disburse at his whim, with no oversight, and the government agreed never to audit any of his prior income tax returns?  That doesn’t seem right…how did we get here?

As a candidate for president, who later was convicted of multiple dozens of felonies, he was asked to release his income tax returns as is customary in these elections, but said he was being audited and would release them once the audit(s) were complete.  (There is no law that prohibits the release of returns that are under audit, although some lawyers would urge their client not to while the matter is ongoing; the public release of tax returns is a nod to openness and to prove that the candidate will have no secret conflict of interest once in office.)

But then this candidate never did release his tax returns, and never gave any further reason why he chose not to do so.  (Some returns were released later by a House committee, though.)

The candidate (and we all know who I’m talking about) won the 2016 election, and later some of his federal tax returns were published after an investigation by the New York Times.  Those returns show the man who claims enormous wealth twice paid only $750 in federal income tax.  This same man had proudly boasted during the campaign that not paying taxes was an indication of his intelligence, rather than his greed or his unwillingness to pay his fair share of the operation of our nation’s government.

After the twice-impeached former president won re-election in 2024, which itself forced the termination of several other criminal cases against him due to a custom not to prosecute sitting presidents, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit – yes, TEN BILLION DOLLARS – against the Internal Revenue Service – yes, an arm of the same Executive Branch that he himself was now (again) the leader of – to recover for the alleged damages done to him by the Service’s alleged laxity in allowing his tax returns to have been published against his wishes.  That’s right: the president admits – he swears in the suit– that letting the public see his tax returns “caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”  Curious claim for such an outstanding and successful businessman, right, but there it is.

As the judge assigned to this case started to ask questions that indicated the suit may not have smooth sailing – that, for example, there didn’t seem to be any real conflict here if the president is suing his own government and he controls the lawyers on both sides – the president announced he has withdrawn the lawsuit.  As is his right.

But THEN, the president’s Justice Department – which has in this second TFG Administration brought shame upon itself and the nation for openly seeking revenge (under the cloak of “justice”) against the boss’ political enemies and those of the boss’ supporters – announced the creation of a giant (insert your own descriptive adjective here) fund controlled by the president’s supplicants that can be distributed by them/him, with no oversight from Congress or the courts, to those who claim damages from being victimized by a previous government of another party which had attempted (ineptly and too slowly, it turned out) to investigate allegations of lawbreaking by TFG himself.  And by his minions.

Mr. Trump’s decision to drop his suit against the I.R.S. appeared to be intended to strip Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who had been overseeing the I.R.S. case in the Southern District of Florida, of her appointed role in approving a formal settlement agreement. By dismissing the case in its entirety, Mr. Trump was able to reach an agreement with his own appointees [emphasis added] without risking the rebuke of an impartial and independent arbiter. Judge Williams, tacitly acknowledging her hands were tied, accepted the president’s dismissal of the suit and formally closed the case by the end of the day.

(snip)

Money for the fund will come from a special, unlimited account available to the Justice Department for settling lawsuits. That pool of money gives the department the authority to make monetary settlements without needing approval from Congress. A group of five people, selected by Mr. [acting attorney general Todd] Blanche, will oversee the operations of the fund, though Mr. Trump can fire its members at will. It will stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before Mr. Trump leaves office.

Creation of the fund, which could be used to compensate Trump supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is sure to please a president who has demanded not only retribution but recompense. But it could create major political problems for congressional Republicans already dealing with the political ballast of his unpopularity — and who will now be forced to say if they support or oppose allocating taxpayer cash to his allies at a time when many Americans are struggling economically.

AND, the agreement attempts to protect itself by claiming up front that no arm of Congress or the courts, or anyone else on this planet or any other, in perpetuity, has any legal right to try to do anything at all about it.  (We’ll see about that: two police officers who were in the Capitol on January 6 have already filed suit to block creation of the fund.  I bet there will be others.)

AND MORE THAN THAT, this agreement also bars the IRS from auditing TFG’s previous tax returns, or those of his sons, or their companies.  For ever.  (A get out of jail free card?  An after-the-fact non-disclosure agreement, shielding any evidence of any prior tax evasion?)

Is that about it?  What should we think about all this?

“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog group that has been critical of the administration.

But others disagree, including some of the nearly 1600 people indicted for their role in the January 6 attack who have already been pardoned or had their convictions dismissed.  By TFG.  They could be getting a payout from the government they attacked.

Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.

“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.”

From the “most corrupt ever” reactions, to the folks annoyed by the nuisance of filling out the application, a more pertinent question (or impertinent, if you are TFG) would be, is this legal?  The answer is, I think: we will see.

The whole enterprise was a jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system, raising what legal experts said were profound questions about presidential power. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, they said, Mr. Trump will have managed simultaneously to thwart Congress’s power of the purse and the ability of the courts to police the separation of powers.

(snip)

Professor [Samuel] Bagenstos, who served as the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget and of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration, wrote in January about the danger posed by the Judgment Fund.

“An administration that wished to spend money on projects or beneficiaries not authorized by Congress,” he wrote, “could simply encourage its desired recipient to bring a lawsuit against the United States and then settle that lawsuit (no matter how frivolous) by making a payment from the Judgment Fund.”

While Congress has ceded power to the executive branch, it could also reclaim it. Indeed, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Tuesday that he expected lawmakers to scrutinize how the president’s lawsuit had been ended.

(snip)

A Justice Department news release on Monday said that the “plaintiffs” — that is, Mr. Trump and his family — “will receive a formal apology but no monetary payment or damages of any kind,” a provision the White House used to defend the fund. Still, the opportunity to help direct payments approaching $2 billion to allies has value.

So does the elimination of the threat of an audit. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump could face a tax liability of more than $100 million.

The deal was open to question for other reasons.

The I.R.S. had plenty of defenses to Mr. Trump’s suit. For instance, it might well have been barred by the statute of limitations.

Nor was it clear that the agency was liable for the acts of Charles Littlejohn, a former I.R.S. contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking Mr. Trump’s tax information and whose actions Mr. Trump had cited as a reason he had been wronged by the government.

The sum Mr. Trump sought was also roughly equal to the agency’s annual budget.

And the suit was palpably collusive, ordinarily a reason for a judge to toss a case.

Tuesday’s addendum to the settlement, the codicil purporting to immunize Mr. Trump and his family, raised its own legal questions.

(snip)

Even under the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision conferring broad immunity on Mr. Trump for his official acts, purely private conduct, as the filing of a tax return would seem to be, is fair game for prosecution after a president becomes a private citizen. It is not clear whether the addendum could block a future administration from pursuing such a claim.

A brutal forecast in effect well past winter

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

The view from the front window today is beautiful: only very high, wispy clouds hanging in an almost windless afternoon that is colder than it looks, but so much better than the three days of real winter we just had, and which I expect will complete our annual allotment here in southeast Texas.  Then, it was the very definition of dreary when I looked through the glass, as it was again last evening when I did a double-take looking into my true window on the world, the television.

Since the party primaries for this coming November’s statewide elections in Texas are held in March, we’ve been blistered by white-hot MAGA-flavored political ads on TV for months already.  I don’t rush to mute these ads (like I do the ones when a particular furniture salesman shouts at me) since I’ve mostly learned to ignore them.  Mostly.  But this line broke through the noise:

“Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.”

So said Aaron Reitz, a candidate in the Republican primary for Texas attorney general.  Never been elected before, but not a fringe guy: a Phi Beta Kappa from Texas A&M University, Marine Corps veteran deployed to Afghanistan some 15 years ago, then a deputy state attorney general (while also being a campaign adviser to his boss’ re-election campaign; that doesn’t seem quite kosher), then chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz, and then confirmed by the Senate last March for a job as an assistant U.S. attorney general.  A job he resigned less than three months later to run for AG back home.  Yep, just three months.

Now, anti-Muslim bigotry is cynically worn as a badge of honor among many Texas Republicans these days.  Last year the governor declared that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations are foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations, and this year the Republicans in the U.S. Senate race in Texas can’t stop finding new ways to make it clear they are anti-Muslim.  As GOP consultant Vinny Minchillo put it for Politico, “The Muslim community is the boogeyman for this cycle….One hundred percent this message works — there’s no question about it. This has been polled up one side and down the other, and with Texas Republican primary voters, it works. It is a thing they are legitimately scared of.”

But my instinctive reaction to the Reitz ad was that this is different: no cutesy dog whistle sending a clear message only to those who own the decoder ring.  He didn’t blast the individual Muslims who’ve committed acts of terror in Western nations, he didn’t accuse all Muslims of hating America, he didn’t even nonsensically claim – as Greg Abbott and others have – that Muslims in Texas are trying to build towns where only Muslims can buy property and their religious law will supersede Texas law, although he did do that later in the ad.  No, he relied on some unspecified religious and civilizational authority to proudly proclaim, as if there was ever any real doubt, that “Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.”  Without specifying why, of course.  Perhaps we can construe that he feels Muslims do not conform to the (unspecified) “Christian values” which he promises to defend from the Muslim “invasion” that has been supported by “politicians.”  (Do you wonder if the Christian value of recognizing that others may find their own path to God is one of the Christian values he’ll defend?)

That’s some pretty assertive, take-no-prisoners religious bigotry.  And just the dreary worldview that Christian nationalists – who by definition reject the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty for all  in the United States – are selling.  Please, don’t buy it.

Recommended viewing

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Among the things that happened today related to the Trump Administration:

  • The Senate voted a do-over, choosing to reclaim more than $9 billion dollars in funding that Congress had already approved for foreign aid and domestic public broadcasting; another House vote before the end of the day Friday will make it official.
  • The Administration widened its scope in fights with the nation’s universities, announcing an employment discrimination investigation against George Mason University for, apparently, daring to admit it had considered race and gender in hiring decisions to meet diversity goals that the government, until very recently, supported.
  • The House passed new legislation aimed at “boost[ing] the legitimacy of the cryptocurrency industry” but prohibiting members of Congress and their families from profiting off of the variety known as stablecoins…but pointedly NOT prohibiting the president and his family from participating as they grow their crypto scam empire.
  • The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman decided no one needed to hear the objections from Democrats to the nomination of Trump legal bully Emil Bove to a seat on a federal appeals court (one step shy of the Supremes!) and called for the vote, prompting the Democrats to walk out of the hearing…and hope the Senate parliamentarian will find the GOP leaders broke several Senate rules and today’s action is null and void. Bove is the guy who has denied the very believable whistleblower accusation that he told his subordinates at the Justice Department that the proper response to a court ruling against the Administration would be to tell the judge to “fuck off.”

There’s more, much more, but I hate a long list.

This is what the Trump Administration calls flooding the zone: doing so much stuff so fast — and not being afraid to be called on some of it by the courts — that people feel confused and the news media can’t keep up. MAGA America thinks that’s great, of course (except when they are fomenting revolt against the Supreme Leader and he tells them not to be duped by Democrats and that no one cares about Jeffrey Epstein anyway. So there.). I think the “flood the zone” tactic achieves its goal pretty effectively and the rest of America is struggling to keep its head above water. So I have a little life preserver for anyone who needs confirmation that, no, it’s not just you who feels overwhelmed.

This week’s new episode of “Frontline” on PBS is “Trump’s Power & The Rule of Law,” and you can watch it online at the Frontline website right here. Like most of the work on this series, which debuted in 1983, this extensive report carefully lays out the facts on the W I D E range of individual issues that are part of TFG’s current effort to take personal control of every aspect of the national government, for his personal benefit. As the producers put it, “FRONTLINE goes inside the high-stakes showdown between President Donald Trump and the courts over presidential power. Trump allies, opponents and experts talk about how he is testing the extent of his power; the legal pushback; and the impact on the rule of law.” Note that reference to the inclusion of Trump allies: there is extensive use of interview bites from multiple Trump Pumpers who get plenty of opportunity to have their say, uninterrupted by any nettlesome interviewer. I found that part to be perhaps the most frightening, hearing them describe what they want to have happen.

This report won’t make all the bad men go away, but it will help you get a better handle on what unconstitutional efforts by this White House and its henchmen are underway so you can direct your resistance as you feel most appropriate. Very much worth your time.

It ain’t over unless we let it be

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

The tariff fetishist is starting a trade war with our friends and our foes, and it’s going to mean higher prices for you and me, just as predicted by all sane economists. But he says he “couldn’t care less.”

The leader of the free world is trashing his country’s friendly relations with neighbors and threatening a new era of manifest destiny that is forcing some world leaders to publicly acknowledge they cannot trust America to be a loyal friend and ally. (But TFG suddenly changes his tune when one of them calls him on it.)

The chief of the executive branch of government authorized what amounts to a group of consultants to fire government employees and carry out cuts to government budgets, none of which has been authorized by the legislative branch which is suddenly incapable of protecting its own lawful perogatives. The action is sloppily conceived and largely illegal, and being sold to the public as fulfillment of a campaign promise to lower the cost of government…with hopes it will also clear financial objections to a planned upcoming extension of tax cuts for wealthy Americans. (And today he attacked unions representing federal employees.)

The champion of law and order is allowing the illegal kidnapping of people from American streets and having them held in secret, people whose “crime” was lawfully expressing an opinion contrary to the president’s or appearing to be an undesirable. And the guy who has never shut up about the alleged “weaponization” of the U.S. Justice Department by his political enemies to persecute him has installed an acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who is accused of threatening his political opponents and supports the president’s ludicrous calls to impeach judges who rule against questionable Trump policies. And, the president has brazenly used government authority to intimidate lawyers and law firms from daring to oppose his actions or represent anyone who does. Or who has at any time in the past. (The highly-respected conservative jurist Michael Luttig believes Trump will ultimately lose his legal fight against the courts; long-time federal trial attorney and columnist Sabrina Haake hopes the chief justice gets a chance to get specific about what presidential actions don’t qualify for immunity.)

The man who harshly criticized a previous president’s use of executive orders as a “power grab” is doing all this through an unprecedented wave of executive orders that is apparently not a power grab at all. Dan Balz sees it as evidence of Trump’s desire to rule rather than to govern: he can’t be bothered waiting for a Congress (that is already controlled by the party he controls) to pass laws when he can act as king and simply issue edicts.

Is all of this part of the MAGA plan? Is all of this what those Americans wanted to have happen, or expected to happen, when they re-elected him? For many of us who did not vote for him, there is a tendency to feel some level of helplessness, which I think is at least part of the administration’s intent with the non-stop pace of activity. But Timothy Noah reminds us that we don’t have to give up.

Surveying this Boschian hellscape, many good people will despair. Yes, Trump is much more dangerous than he was during his first term (which was harrowing enough). He’s more giddily reckless about impounding funds, shutting down agencies, disobeying court orders, and using the government to punish political enemies. But if you allow yourself to tune out this ugliness, you might as well have voted for the man. The president is counting on such demoralization.

(snip)

How can ordinary citizens fight back? To scout the best approaches, I canvassed activists, lawyers, scholars, politicians, and union leaders for advice. Some of what they suggest will lie beyond your abilities, expertise, financial resources, or sense of personal safety—in which case, choose something you can do. Just about everyone I spoke to emphasized that there is no silver bullet—no single arena, not even the courtroom, where Trump’s illegal power grab can be stopped. “There’s no messiah” who will “sweep in and make everything better,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. That’s up to you and me. The good news is there are a lot of us.

Indeed, there may be even more than we can know just yet. Because Trump isn’t careful about whose interests he acts against, Resistance 2.0 has potential to evolve into a bipartisan movement. “Successful authoritarian regimes determine what their winning coalition is,” observed Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the resistance nonprofit Indivisible, “and then they work very hard to keep that coalition together.” Trump lacks such discipline, and as a result he frequently screws over natural allies.

Trump alienates the military by installing as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a boozer and womanizer who called an officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps a “jagoff” and, after he was confirmed, fired the top JAG officers in the Air Force, Army, and Navy. Trump alienates Big Pharma by installing as health and human services secretary a recovering heroin addict, womanizer, and (according to his cousin Caroline Kennedy) “predator” who less than two years ago said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” As HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommends treating measles with cod liver oil and letting bird flu spread unchecked through poultry flocks. Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, “I’m not worried about inflation,” and “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Trump, meanwhile, terrorizes Wall Street with market-killing tariffs and stray threats not to honor the national debt.

No matter who joins this fight, it won’t be won next week, or next month. Barring impeachment and removal, Trump will be president for four long years, and not even his allies expect him to become less authoritarian and kleptocratic. So pace yourself. But the sooner you join in, the more effectively we can limit the damage.

The article goes on to outline a number of ways that each of us can do something, the best each of us can, to be part of the resistance, from protests to lawsuits to just staying informed. Don’t give up: the fight isn’t over.

And now, a public service announcement on behalf of America’s sanity

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

It is the midst of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere…right now forecasters are forecasting their asses off about a major ice storm aimed at a hunk of the South.  The days are still comparatively short, and with the cold weather that has accompanied a lot of rain in our part of the world (is the drought over yet?) I am not alone in looking for more indoor distractions until golf weather returns.

But, please God, not this: American journalism outlets and associated information-providing avenues, would ya stand down on the perpetualization of the campaign for president of the United States!  Stop with the assumption that there is nothing more important to talk about, nothing so critical for me to know about, than who is favored and disfavored by people responding to public opinion polls.  Even if those people are telling the pollsters the truth, who cares right now?!  So much can happen in the months and months before anyone casts a meaningful ballot that these results are pointless; they only serve to keep funds flowing to the political-industrial complex.

It is too early.  It is soooo tiresome.  Even the primaries and caucuses that happen more than six months before the general election aren’t helpful in learning about candidates.  The whole thing has become a proxy for the on-going national food fight on “cultural issues” (that really aren’t even about culture) and not about administering government operations or even on providing leadership on issues.

And, at this point a year away from the first voters voting in the next national election, what you are telling us has proved to be, so often, so very wrong.  In Politico, Jeff Greenfield reminds us that in most recent years the “favorites” at this point do not win the contest.  You remember Howard Dean trouncing John Kerry in 2004, right?  And 2008, when Rudy Giuliani blew away John McCain while Hillary Clinton obliterated that senator from Illinois with the big ears?

The point here is not to argue for a vow of journalistic silence in the long slog leading up to the actual contests; it’s to put that part of the process into context, along with a serious dose of humility. Yes, Trump looks weakened, but are we really ready to anoint Ron DeSantis the nominee before he proves himself on the big stage? Yes, Biden is an octogenarian whose approval rating has been underwater since August 2021, but is anyone in his party really about to challenge his hold on the White House?

If you need something civic to worry about, worry about the government debt ceiling and the on-going budget deficits; give some thought to how our country can help our allies stifle threats from Russia and China; consider the real causes for and possible humane solutions to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border and the budget crisis it’s created for federal and state governments.  You could engage in the speculation about which team will win the Super Bowl or who will be selected as the next head coach of your favorite NFL team.  You could even talk to your friends about who will win The Bachelor, but please promise to do that verrry quietly so the rest of us can’t hear you.  But please leave the next race for president alone for now.

And if you need something to keep you warm on these cold winter days and nights, curl up with The Columbia Journalism’s Review of how American journalism handled coverage of Donald Trump.  There’s something here to warm the hearts of media-haters everywhere.