Bloomberg - In what Brandon DeBot, policy director of New York University’s Tax Law Center, called “a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system,” the US Department of Justice sealed a deal with Trump in which the president agreed to drop a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS over a 2019 leak of his tax records.
In exchange, the Justice Department said Trump—who as president has direct authority over the law enforcement agency—will never be subject to an IRS probe of “any and all claims” or demands for damages that have been or could have been filed against him before today’s agreement.
The deal, coming a day after the Justice Department also agreed to what Democrats and ethics experts called a “corrupt” $1.8 billion “slush fund” for Trump allies, was approved by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Blanche said Trump followers who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and assaulted police could get payouts from the fund, which he said is intended to compensate victims of “government weaponization.”
Huffington Post - Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) thinks President Donald Trump has gone from old school, “brick and mortar corruption” to a type of brazen profiteering that once seemed impossible now that he’s in his second term.
Fresh after news that Trump’s Department of Justice plans to create a $1.7 billion “anti-weaponization fund” to sponsor so-called victims of political “lawfare,” Raskin told The Daily Beast there is nothing more critical than cracking down on the administration’s array of grifts during the site’s Sunday podcast.
“We’ve never seen abuse like the kind of abuse that has taken place under Donald Trump,” he said, accusing the president of using legal loopholes and a “shadow government” to help his “personal wealth skyrocket during the second term.”
The dollar figure is not coincidental, according to former Justice Department prosecutors, congressional investigators and domestic extremism researchers. It is a direct nod to 1776, the year the U.S. declared independence from Britain. It is also a number that Capitol rioters invoked as they breached the building on Jan. 6, 2021 — in chants, on flags and in Proud Boys planning documents titled “1776 Returns,” which laid out a scheme to seize federal buildings and force a new election. Trump supporters co-opted the patriotic year as a rallying cry for their “1776 moment” to overturn the 2020 election results.
“That number didn’t just appear arbitrarily,” said Michael Fanone, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., who was beaten by rioters while defending the Capitol and lawmakers. “Like everything else, it’s a branding thing. Donald Trump is trying to rebrand January 6th insurrectionists as great American patriots.”
People convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol can apply for “formal apologies” and payments from the fund — including those found guilty of assaulting police officers.
Pressed by reporters Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance, who previously said violent insurrectionists would not be pardoned, refused to rule anything out.
“We’re going to look at everything case by case,” Vance told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor. “I’m not committing to giving anybody money or committing to giving no one money.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche delivered a similar message to lawmakers Tuesday, telling them that eligibility decisions will rest with a new “Truth and Justice Commission.” Every member of that board will be appointed by Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney; only one appointment requires consultation with Congress, and the president “can remove any member,” according to a Justice Department announcement of the fund. MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment