OP/ED
Billions of taxpayer dollars could end up in the pocket of the president
Dan Rather and Team Steady
As the chaos in Washington continues to swirl, we cannot forget we are a country at war and must remember those put in harm’s way by a president sitting in his clubhouse on the other side of the world. President Donald Trump does not appear to have a carefully thought-out strategy for Iran — no exit plan, no way to close Pandora’s box.
We are now eight weeks into what he called a “little excursion into Iran,” waiting for resolution to the war Trump promised would be quick.
Within days of the start of the war, we learned that persons unknown profited greatly from potentially positive war news, with flurries of trading activity just before prices spiked. While they got rich, the rest of us got soaked.
Those someone’s — we will likely never know who because the Justice Department is no longer in the business of finding out — appear to have had prior knowledge of events that dramatically affected the price of oil and related commodities.
It seems all too fitting that everything with this White House, war included, begins and ends with cold, hard cash.
Presidents in my lifetime only go back to Herbert Hoover, but of those I’ve studied and covered as a journalist, it’s safe to say Trump is the greediest in American history, as well as the least ethical. That toxic combination has allowed him to use his power to line his own pockets in spectacular fashion. But the billions he has already made since reassuming office apparently aren’t enough.
The president is seeking another $10 billion more. But this time it’s your money.
In January, his lawyers quietly filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of the executive branch that Trump oversees. No sitting president has attempted to sue the U.S. government over which he presides. (Richard Nixon sued, but not while in office.)
As you try to understand his grift, follow along as we attempt to untie this ignoble Gordian knot.
Lawyers from the Justice Department represent the Internal Revenue Service when it gets sued. So, attorneys Trump appointed and who work for him are representing the entity he is suing. Those attorneys would be the ones to approve a massive payout to their boss.
The suit alleges that in 2019, during the first Trump administration, the IRS and the Treasury Department did not do enough to prevent a contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from downloading Trump’s tax records and giving them to The New York Times and ProPublica.
The filings show that Trump paid little or nothing in federal income tax for years, a fact the self-proclaimed billionaire wanted to keep from the public. Not since Nixon, another pillar of morality, has a president failed to release his tax returns.
The suit claims Trump, his family, and his company suffered “reputational and financial harm” as well as “public embarrassment” because of the disclosure. Since the leak of the tax returns, the Trump family fortunes have flourished and their net worth has ballooned by billions.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty to disclosing tax return information without authorization. Though the sentencing guidelines recommended 10 months, he was made an example of and sentenced to five years in prison.
Not only is Trump suing the IRS for something that happened on his watch, the inspector general of the Treasury warned him that there were vulnerabilities in the IRS’s internal computers.
You would think his lawyers would keep this information to themselves, instead they are using it to defend the suit.
“Every year from 2010 through 2020, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has warned the IRS about security deficiencies related to the protection of taxpayers’ confidential tax return information … Many of these deficiencies went uncorrected and … allowed Littlejohn to misappropriate the information, upload it to a private website, and then disclose it,” the suit states.
On Friday, Trump’s lawyers asked the court for a 90-day extension “while the parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation.” In other words, Trump’s personal lawyers and Trump’s Department of Justice lawyers are working on a financial settlement — before the case goes to trial.
The president says he will give any windfall from the suit to charity. If you believe that, you will believe that the moon is made of paper. Back in 2016, The Washington Post tried and failed to find evidence of the $8.5 million Trump claimed he gave to charity over 15 years.
The Trump Foundation behaved no better. A court order dissolved the foundation in 2018 over a “shocking pattern of illegality” and required a repayment of $2 million to several charities.
Trump also says he will give away some of the $230 million he is seeking in damages from the federal government to reimburse his legal costs to fight two investigations against him: the Russia probe and classified documents case.
The claims in these cases, filed in 2023 and 2024 respectively, remain in limbo. But when asked about them, Trump said, “They probably owe me a lot of money.” By “they” he meant the American taxpayer.
In November, Sen. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, introduced the “No Torts for Trump Act,” a bill to block sitting presidents from getting taxpayer-funded payouts.
In response to Trump’s IRS suit, on April 15 — no coincidence it was Tax Day — congressional Democrats introduced the “Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Fund Act,” an expansion of Schiff’s bill. It aims to prohibit sitting presidents, vice presidents, and their families from receiving lawsuit settlements from the U.S. government.
As Americans struggle to deal with the financial fallout of Trump’s war of choice, the billionaire president can’t get enough for himself.