Trump is Leading the GOP Off a Cliff
Members of Congress are pushing back against his latest scam
It is becoming increasingly clear even among Republicans that the president has lost interest in anything that doesn’t make him and his family richer or inflate his ego. The Republican Party abandoned hope months ago that Trump would tout “affordability” as the party’s message ahead of the midterms.
His economic message was a non-starter after he dropped the first bomb on Iran. Since then, prices are heading in the opposite direction of his popularity. So, now Donald Trump spends his time and our money on retribution campaigns and glorification projects.
All of this is terrible for Trump’s party, but it could be good for the country if his irresponsibility can be checked. In the meantime, my Steady friends, it’s incredibly difficult to watch this never-ending train wreck.
The words “criminal enterprise” have crept into the presidential conversation for the first time since I covered Richard Nixon.
Monday’s “settlement” between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service, creating a $1.8 billion slush fund to reward the president’s loyalists, was a startling low-point in a presidency swamped with low-points. Then Trump doubled down — down being the operative word.
On Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed a “release of claims” form, an addendum to the original settlement creating the billion-dollar-plus fund to pay off the president’s pawns, including January 6 insurrectionists, even the ones who pleaded guilty are eligible.
The one-page document, posted on the Department of Justice website, states that the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “examinations” of Trump, his family, and his businesses. It specified “tax returns filed before the effective date” of the settlement, which was Monday.
The IRS audit of Trump, which started years ago when he hosted “The Apprentice,” will evaporate. Trump reportedly took the same losses twice and experts say he owes, with interest and penalties, more than $100 million.
Blanche signed away the ability of any federal agency to investigate, audit, or sue Trump et al., in the future and for perpetuity. It amounts to unbridled corruption in the guise of preemptive exoneration.
Trump effectively gave himself legal cover to never pay taxes again, since he cannot be audited. Remember those 3,700 stock trades he made during the first quarter of the year? He earned somewhere between $220 and $750 million dollars and is now free to pay zero taxes on those gains.
In true Trump style, this is uncharted tax territory. “I am unaware of a single precedent where the IRS has agreed in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed tax returns for a specific person or business,” Danny Werfel, a recent IRS commissioner, told Politico.
Jennifer Ricketts, a former branch director at the IRS, told The New York Times that she had “never heard of the department ever being willing to grant blanket immunity. That seems blatantly corrupt. It’s a shocking gift to the president.”
Can this be legal? Likely not. According to Brandon DeBot, the director of the Tax Law Center Policy Director, the entire settlement is “a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system.”
Under U.S. law the president and most of the executive branch cannot ask the IRS to end an investigation. Because it was the acting attorney general who signed the order, Trump’s army of lawyers, both personal and governmental, will argue that they are on solid legal ground.
Blanche did not come up with this idea on his own. Trump was playing the long game. First, he brought a bad faith lawsuit against the IRS. Then, he had it dismissed before a judge could rule on its merits, so that he could negotiate a settlement that had nothing to do with the original suit.
The $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund also runs afoul of existing law. It violates a Trump administration directive put forward by former Attorney General Pam Bondi. It states that the government is prohibited from paying groups not involved in an underlying lawsuit.
The settlement has upended a lot of pieces on the political chess board.
On Thursday afternoon, Senate Republicans canceled a planned vote on an immigration enforcement bill. It should have been a slam-dunk since it is filibuster-proof, and thus needs only 51 votes for passage. With Trump always unwilling to abandon his personal political agenda, in this case the slush fund, the Republican leadership decided to pause rather than lose.
A bipartisan effort is underway in the House to kill the fund. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA.) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) are drafting legislation, according to Politico. Fitzpatrick said his constituents “don’t want a DOJ slush fund that has not been described or explained to anybody.”
As one might imagine, the editorial board of The New York Times takes exception with Trump’s latest chicanery. Thursday’s headline read, “There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This.”
More surprising was Republican operative Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal editorial, where he wondered about Trump’s “$1.8 billion slush fund that critics are concerned could go to Jan. 6 felons.” He argued that the only way Republicans can hold onto control of Congress is to rein in the president.
“The more undisciplined the White House messages on war and the economy, the more at risk GOP candidates will be. The more Mr. Trump thrusts himself into the campaign, the more damage he’ll do to Republicans and his own cause. The more he focuses on projects like his ‘world-class, beautiful ballroom’ or ‘Triumphal Arch,’ the more voters will conclude he’s unconcerned about them,” Rove wrote.
Rove is right, but no one in the current White House has the power or the guts to restrain their boss. The arch no one wants is inching closer to reality. On Thursday, the Trump-packed Commission of Fine Arts voted to approve the 250-foot arch that will block the intentionally unobstructed view of Arlington National Cemetery from the Lincoln Memorial. Several veterans are suing to stop construction.
Even though the $1 billion line item for Trump’s ballroom has been removed from the immigration funding bill, construction of the building (that Trump promised was being paid for solely with private money) is ongoing.
The nonpartisan parliamentarian of the Senate ruled that ballroom funding could not be included in a reconciliation bill, though Republicans reportedly didn’t have the votes anyway. For the rest of the year, the Senate is going to be a hard place for Trump to get his unpopular measures passed.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is retiring and has been no friend of Trump. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) lost his primary this week, after Trump backed his opponent. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) may lose his primary next week since Trump endorsed his MAGA extremist challenger. And then there are all the incumbents in close races who need to distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular president. (see Rove above)
The absurdity of Trump giving himself a free pass from investigation by any federal agency should not be ignored or minimized. But Trump’s corruption is not wholly unchecked .
The courts, especially the Supreme Court, and both Houses of Congress have the power to at least slow him, if not stop him. But only if they have the courage to do so. Down the road, impeachment and conviction could become a factor, but we’re a long way from that.
All of which brings us to the fact that the final deciders are we the people and our votes.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
Let him! The GOP has bastardized America politics with their special brand of corruption, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, and thievery. Let them all burn in hell!
Let them walk off the cliff