Democrats, J6 Police Officers Move To Block
After dropping a sham $10 billion lawsuit against himself, Trump’s Department of Justice announced a so-called “settlement agreement” creating a $1.8 billion slush fund that could be used to reward convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists in advance of the upcoming midterm elections. The “agreement” is structured to prevent any scrutiny, much less accountability.
Constitutional law professor Richard Primus called it, “The most corrupt act in U.S. government history,” while other legal experts used terms like “cartoonishly evil.”
The suit itself was headed for dismissal, since Trump suing himself meant there was no actual “case or controversy” between two adversaries, as is required by law. The judge in the case, Kathleen Williams, had ordered arguments on the issue, but that was widely regarded as a mere formality, which pushed Trump to dismiss before she threw the case out.
Indeed, Trump made no mention of a settlement agreement in his request to dismiss the case, so it’s not really a settlement agreement at all: there is no case to settle. It’s typical of Trump to have so many lies lumped together that it’s difficult for journalists to unpack, but this one seems fundamental: the “settlement agreement” has no foundation in law and faces almost certain challenge. But public attention has been more focused on the harms it threatens to produce.
Trump allies have long promised that Trump’s return to the White House would free all the insurrectionists — which he did on day one —.and compensate them for being arrested, tried and convicted, which the fund is clearly designed and intended to do.
However, the terms are so vague that clearly innocent victims of Trump’s weaponized Justice Department can also seek compensation — and bring suit, when, inevitably, their claims are denied.
At a Senate hearing the day after the agreement was released, Democratic senators pressed Trump’s private attorney, now Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, to give them assurances that violent insurrectionists would not be compensated. But Blanche declined.
“Simple question: will eligible — will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen asked. “Anybody in this country is eligible to apply,” Blanche replied.
“Are there going to be rules that say that if you’ve assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible? Why not make that a rule?” Van Hollen asked.
“I’m not one of the commissioners setting up the rules,” Blanche begged off. “I expect that there will be rules set up.”
Blanche spoke as if he had no hand in making sure that no such rule was part of the “agreement.” Clearly, such a rule would have defeated the whole purpose of the “settlement,” as described by prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnson on Democracy Now.
“This is dictatorship in action,” Johnson said. “What he now has is a fund with an interesting number, $1.776 billion, to arm his goon squads, people like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, to carry out acts of violence or intimidation against people on his behalf, with no accountability for who receives this money, no rationale for it.”
Johnson’s analysis wasn’t just based on past statements by Trump and his allies. The “agreement” itself makes clear that it intends to compensate people for time in prison.
“In evaluating claims,” it says, “The Anti-Weaponization Fund shall consider the totality of the circumstances, including: …
Any time the claimant spent in prison or otherwise in federal prison or custody as a result of the Lawfare and Weaponization.”
Not only is this outrageous on its face, it would also violate the 14th Amendment, as Rep. Jamie Raskin explained to The New Republic the week before the settlement was announced. The amendment clearly states, “Neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
As if the “agreement” weren’t bad enough, Blanche issued a pair of DOJ documents making things even worse. The first was most noteworthy for citing a false precedent: the Keepseagle fund under the Barack Obama administration, which was created to redress generations of harm to Native American farmers who were denied Food and Drug Administration farm loans. In that case, there was clear harm, clearly delineated in a real lawsuit, with a real settlement, and court oversight of the process — none of which are present here.
But then Blanche released a second document the next day, vastly expanding the lawlessness involved. It stated that, “The United States … is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing … examinations or similar or related reviews” against Trump “or related or affiliated individuals,” including family members or related companies and trusts.
In plain English, former DOJ attorney Harry Litman described it as “a promise that the IRS won’t go after Trump, his companies, and his families for unpaid taxes.”
As Johnson noted, “Donald Trump basically will now not have to pay the — what The New York Times estimates is more than $100 million — and I think that’s a very conservative number — in taxes from the past, and he will get a walk on what are clearly, from the released tax returns, felony-level tax crimes.”
And it’s not just past unpaid taxes and tax crimes. This is a get-out-of-jail-free card for any and all tax crimes that Trump and his family want to pursue… forever.
And if past is prologue, the sky’s the limit, as Johnson also noted. “Donald Trump has been creating nonexistent companies, just made-up, fictitious companies, and taking tax losses that reduced his taxes for all the way back to at least 1984.” With a new get-out-of-jail-free card, there’s no way that Trump’s 42-year-long crime spree is about to end.
Unless…
There’s so much lawlessness here that it seems inevitable things will be tied up in court for months, if not years.
Two days after the “settlement” was announced, two J6 police officers, former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, and former Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, filed a lawsuit to block the so-called “weaponization fund.”
As Dunn explained to MS NOW’s Britt Miller:
We are going to sue to stop this illegal slush fund. Now, obviously, we encourage everybody else to sue. Everybody should; this can’t happen. So, we believe that we, the officers in this suit, will be harmed by this. We have been subjected to countless death threats in addition to all the violence that we faced on Jan. 6. But for just speaking out the truth, I mean, I guarantee you somebody’s watching this right now and typing death threats to us right now. And deaths only continue to embolden and potentially continue to arm a militia that Donald Trump will have on retainer.
Those are the stakes we face, not just for the officers like Dunn, but for all law-abiding American citizens whose hard-earned money is being stolen to fund the next attempt to overthrow our democracy.