Police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, are suing the Trump administration over its creation of a $1.776 billion slush fund for President Trump’s allies who claim they were unfairly targeted.The lawsuit, filed by former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and current Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in U.S. District Court, alleges that the fund is illegal and violates the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, which states the government can’t pay debts “incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” They note that the fund could be used to pay the rioters, and also fund violent organizations.“If allowed to begin making payments, the fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters who threatened plaintiffs’ lives that day, and continue to do so,” the officers’ lawyers wrote in the legal filing. “Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the fund to arm and equip themselves. The fund will grant their [past] acts of violence legal imprimatur.” The plaintiffs are asking for a federal judge to declare the fund unlawful, to block officials from setting it up, and to reverse any payments that have already been made. The lawsuit alleges that creating the fund also broke federal law, as the government can only settle lawsuits after the attorney general declares that such a payment “is in the interest of the United States.”“The payment of $1.776 billion into the Anti-Weaponization Fund to settle Trump v. IRS was patently not ‘in the interest of the United States,’” the lawsuit states. “Rather, it was a misappropriation of taxpayer funds orchestrated by the President to reward his allies and the rioters who committed violence in his name.”It will be interesting to see where this lawsuit goes, and whether it reaches the Supreme Court, which may or may not rule in favor of the president. One hopes that it would see the legal problems with a fund that the president can spend on people who break the law in his name.
Democrats are doing what they can to stop President Donald Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department and his self-serving use of taxpayer money.On Wednesday morning, Representative Jamie Raskin, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, moved to subpoena acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and other officials involved in the creation of a $1.8 billion slush fund, which is expected to be used to pay out Trump allies who feel they were wronged by previous administrations.The committee vote on the subpoena will be Wednesday afternoon. Republicans have the numbers to block it, though Scott MacFarlane of MeidasTouch noted that “it’s not a favorable vote politically.”Trump’s slush fund was announced on Monday by the Department of Justice (remember when that used to be an independent body?) as part of a settlement in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. The lawsuit was filed over the president’s tax returns, which were leaked to the press by an IRS contractor in 2018 after Trump repeatedly refused to release them.Critics and policy experts have labeled the slush fund one of the most blatantly corrupt moves the Trump administration has ever made, and Democrats seem to agree.In addition to the subpoena, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee and the Ways and Means Committee submitted a congressional inquiry to the White House on Wednesday containing 10 questions about what the hell is going on. They are similarly questioning the president’s newfound immunity from any IRS investigations into his and his family’s tax returns.“The American people and the world just witnessed one of the most brazen acts of public corruption and self-dealing in American history,” the inquiry reads.
Before he became the president’s sharpest Republican critic in Congress, Massie was a libertarian scientist who hated government spending and the taxes that paid for it.
Before he became the president’s sharpest Republican critic in Congress, Massie was a libertarian scientist who hated government spending and the taxes that paid for it.