Friday, May 22, 2026. In a shock to Convicted Felon Donald Chump, Democrats and Republicans push back against his slush fund.
A
federal judge on Wednesday ordered White House staff and President
Trump's top advisers to comply with a law that requires certain
presidential records to be preserved.
In a
54-page decision, U.S. District Judge John Bates granted a preliminary
injunction that requires most White House employees to preserve
presidential and vice presidential records covered by the Presidential
Records Act. The 1978 law was enacted in the wake of the Watergate
scandal and established public ownership of presidential records.
Among
those who must comply with Bates' order are White House chief of staff
Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the National Security
Council, Council of Economic Advisers and employees working within the
Executive Office of the President. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance
are not covered by the judge's directive. The injunction takes effect
at 9 a.m. on May 26.
The decision stems from a memorandum opinion
issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel last month
that claimed the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it
exceeds Congress' power. The office said Mr. Trump therefore didn't
need to comply with it.
Two historical and
government oversight groups, the American Historical Association and
American Oversight, as well as the Freedom of the Press Foundation, sued to invalidate
the Justice Department's opinion. They asked the judge to order White
House officials to comply with the Presidential Records Act and preserve
records.
In his decision granting that request
for relief, the judge wrote that the Presidential Records Act is
"likely constitutional," splitting from the Justice Department's
determination.
Likely
constitutional? Since when does the Constitution matter to Chump? He's
an enemy of it and of the rule of law. He's a convicted felon. A law
breaker who operates outside the law repeatedly. He cheapens our
discourse and he cheapens politics -- and on cheapening politics, who
would have thought it could be cheapened any more than already was?
During his first term, President Trump routinely tore up offical documents,
forcing archivists to meticulously tape them together to comply with
the Presidential Records Act. There were even reports that he clogged up toilets in the White House with shredded papers he hoped to disappear forever.
This
time around, he’s taking a different approach. Instead of quietly
defying the law, he ordered his advisors to dummy up an opinion saying
that, actually, the PRA is unconstitutional. This requires a not
inconsiderable amount of chutzpah, since the Supreme Court said almost
50 years ago that it is. And yesterday, Judge John Bates of the US
District Court in DC said it again, in a meticulous opinion that opened with quotes from George Orwell and Shakespeare. The
case was assigned to Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee,
who’s been on the bench long enough that he remembers when the White
House Counsel and OLC at least pretended to be doing real law. He did
not hide his disdain for a government that seeks to operate in secret.
“While
the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does
not free it from modest constraint. Quite the opposite,” he wrote.
“Each branch of government derives its authority from the trust placed
in it by the People, and Congress has validly determined that this Act
helps to maintain that trust by shining some light on the activities of
the President and his aides.”
Warrington and
Gaiser caught substantial judicial side-eye as well, as the court
sniffed that “it is not for this Court, OLC, or the White House to
second guess Congress’s lawful determination—made pursuant to at least
two different enumerated powers—that citizens ought eventually to have
access to these records of presidential activities carried out in their
name.”
President
Donald Trump is making mistakes as president that, according to his
former Homeland Security Chief of Staff, will cost Americans their
lives.
Miles Taylor, who served during Trump’s first term,
told MS NOW on Wednesday that the $1.776 billion slush fund that Trump
created for his political supporters and possibly himself is more
expensive than the government spends on important national security
projects.
The slush fund. It came up this week in a Senate Appropritions Subcommittee hearing that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared at (see
Wednesday's snapshot). We'll note this exchange:
Senator Chris Coons:
Thank you. You referenced a previous case, I think it was Keepseagle v.
Vilsack, under the previous administration. Did that case involve a
president suing his own government and then settling that case before it
could be reviewed or approved by a judge?
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: So, no. Neither does the commission.
Senator
Chris Coons: No, it did not. And so when you suggested that they’re
nearly identical, they’re not identical. I think there’s a critical
difference here: President Trump is the first president to sue his own
government and then direct his chosen acting attorney general to reach
this kind of settlement. Will you commit that none of President Trump’s
family will receive a direct payout from this fund?
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: Yes,
but what you just said is not true. I mean – if I can correct that –
the president did not direct me to do anything. And secondly, when we
said that the structure of the commission is similar to Keepseagle,
that’s true. It wasn’t – the underlying case is not the same, the
structure of the commission is the same as the Keepseagle commission.
Senator
CHris Coons: Has it ever happened that a sitting president sued his own
government for $10 billion and then directed the settlement of the case
and the establishment of a payout fund?
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: Not
that I’m aware, but there are a lot of things that President Trump’s
the first of. No president had been indicted one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight times either.
Senator
Chris Coons: Correct. No president’s been indicted. And will you commit
that none of this money will go to President Trump’s campaign donors?
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: I
am not committing to anything beyond the settlement agreement itself.
When you say campaign donors, they are not excluded from seeking
compensation if they were weaponized.
Senator
Chris Coons: Last question, during Police Week, I heard from a number of
law enforcement friends who found it appalling that there was the
possibility that folks like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, who had
assaulted Capitol Police officers, could receive multimillion-dollar
payouts from this fund. Will you commit that no one who has been
convicted of assaulting a police officer will receive a payout from this
fund?
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: So,
I share the concerns that apparently members of law enforcement gave to
you last week, although none of this was announced last week, so that’s
surprising.
Senator Chris Coons: They had heard rumors there would be a settlement fund.
The
lawsuit filed against President Trump’s $1.667 billion
“anti-weaponization” fund has been assigned to a judge already on the
president’s bad side.
U.S. District
Judge Richard Leon will be overseeing the case against Trump’s slush
fund too. Leon has previously drawn Trump’s ire not only by delaying the construction of the White House ballroom, but also by striking down the president’s executive order to target law firm WilmerHale.
Republicans
called Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing to go after the
Southern Poverty Law Center, but Jamie Raskin showed up to talk about
something far bigger.
Armed with the
Constitution and a list of names he wanted subpoenaed, the Maryland
Democrat turned his opening remarks into a full-scale takedown of what
he called one of the most corrupt financial schemes the Trump
administration has pulled off yet — a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization
Fund” that Raskin argued was nothing more than a taxpayer-funded reward
for Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers.
He laid out exactly where the money came from and who he believed was responsible.
“The Trump administration is perpetuating a fraud against America
by taking nearly $1.8 billion of our money from the U.S. Judgment Fund
and without any legal authorization from Congress, purporting to use it
to pay off his once and future private militia,” Raskin said. Raskin
pointed to a damning detail that he said exposed just how legally
indefensible the arrangement was — the Treasury Department’s own top
lawyer walked out the door the moment the deal went public.
Career
IRS attorneys, he noted, had already drafted a memo calling Trump’s
underlying lawsuit deeply flawed and urging the DOJ to fight it in
court.
Instead, the DOJ handed over $1.8 billion.
He
then reached for the 14th Amendment, reading directly from Section 4 to
make the constitutional case against every dollar of the fund.
“The
United States shall not assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred
in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States. All such
debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
The warning for Jan. 6 insurrectionists expecting a million-dollar payout was delivered without hesitation.
“Everybody
who thinks they’re getting a big payoff this week should understand
this — this payment is illegal and void. The money belongs only to the
taxpayers of America. And we will get that money back,” Raskin said.
Some coverage from the last 24 hours.
This is a big issue. This is a sitting president trying to break the law in front of everyone's eyes. Trying to hand over our tax dollars to insurrectionists. Trying to wall off himself and his family from any IRS investigations. That's him admitting that he and his family can't be audited, that he's scared not only of existing cases prior to his re-election but of new cases since he's started his second term and used the presidency to enrich his own pockets.
Michael Rainey (FISCAL TIMES) notes that the slush fund "also
brings all investigations by the IRS into Trump and his family and
businesses to a permanent halt. That would mean that a long-running
investigation into Trump’s taxes will be shut down, eliminating the risk
that he could be hit with a massive bill for back payments and
penalties" and that this could save Chump $100 million in current investigations from before the 2024 election. Rainey also notes:
Trump
said the fund was going to be used to reimburse people for the legal
costs associated with what he called abuse by the Obama and Biden
administrations. “People were destroyed, they went to jail,” Trump said.
“Their families were ruined, they committed suicide.”
Trump added that the reimbursement costs were “peanuts” compared to the value of lives he said had been destroyed.
So
Chump will be supporting reparations for slavery since slavery
destroyed people, they went to jail, they were tortured, they were
murdered, they committed suicide, families were ruined. So that must
mean Chump will be urging Congress to do reparations for slavery,
right?
No? He only cares about his cult members who broke the law and tried to overthrow the republic? Yeah, that's Chump for you.
Federal
law prohibits the executive branch from requesting — “directly or
indirectly” — that the IRS terminate investigations into any taxpayer,
let alone the president. “It says what the president did this week was a
crime,” said Galle, the UC Berkeley Law professor.
That
statute also requires IRS officers and officials who receive those
requests to report them to the Treasury Department's inspector general,
the agency’s independent watchdog. Failure to do so can result in
criminal prosecution.
Get it? Federal law prohibits what Chump and Blanche are proposing. Prohibits it.
For much of President Trump’s time in
office, Republican lawmakers have had little appetite to stand up to his
brand of vindictive politics.
Through
revenge primary campaigns, bullying social media posts and the threat
that he can command the G.O.P. base to go after anyone at any time, Mr.
Trump has brought lawmakers in his party under his control like no
president in modern history. A single critical word against Mr. Trump or
his agenda could result in a full-scale retribution campaign to force a
disloyal Republican from office.
But
this week, in a rarity in G.O.P. politics, Mr. Trump’s taunts, bullying
and threats have backfired, at least for now. Senate Republicans, after
the president targeted two of their own, stood up to Mr. Trump on two of
his biggest priorities: money for his White House ballroom, and a $1.8
billion fund to reward Trump supporters who claim political persecution
by Democrats, such as the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6,
2021.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund
to pay people who assault cops?” said Senator Mitch McConnell,
Republican of Kentucky. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your
pick.”
When Todd Blanche, the acting attorney
general, arrived at the Capitol on Thursday to meet with Republicans
questioning the Justice Department fund
that President Trump has said he wants to use to pay people who claim
to have been unfairly targeted by the government, he may have expected a
few strident complaints.
Instead,
what unfolded in an ornate room just off the Senate floor on Thursday
morning was a two-hour blowup in which dozens of Republican senators
vented their anger and concern about the president’s fund at Mr.
Blanche.
They questioned its legal
basis, whom it would pay and how the process would work. And they made
it clear they wanted no part of the plan, the product of a deal struck between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and his own administration
to use money that Congress does not control to pay off purported
victims of government mistreatment, potentially including some of the
rioters who violently assaulted their workplace during the Jan. 6, 2021,
riot.
By the end, Republicans were so
livid that party leaders scrapped planned votes on the party’s top
priority — a $72 billion immigration crackdown measure it had planned to
muscle through before Memorial Day — punting action for fear of having
to cast votes on the fund.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Dick Durbin's office:
During his opening statement at a nominations
hearing, Durbin also denounced the Trump loyalists appearing in
Committee today including two circuit nominees, nominee to be Inspector
General in DOJ
WASHINGTON – During today’s Senate
Judiciary Committee nominations hearing, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip
Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
criticized the Trump Administration’s misuse of taxpayer dollars to line
the pockets of January 6 insurrectionists and Trump’s political allies
through a nearly $2 billion Department of Justice slush fund.
Today’s nominations hearing includes Benjamin
Flowers, to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit;
Matthew Schwartz, to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit; and, Don Berthiaume, Jr., to be Inspector General in the
Department of Justice. During his opening statement, Durbin also
denounced the lifetime nominations of Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Flowers. Mr.
Schwartz continues to represent the President in two pending cases.
That includes the appeal of a New York State jury verdict finding
President Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business
records, stemming from a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film star
Stormy Daniels. Mr. Flowers filed a Supreme Court amicus brief
supporting the President’s unconstitutional attempt to limit birthright
citizenship.
Key Quotes:
“Imagine if Joe Biden went this far [with a DOJ slush fund].
Would we have a hearing in the Judiciary Committee? I certainly know we
would and you do too. Will there be a hearing in this Committee when it
comes to this new slush fund which [stated] ‘forever bar[red] and
preclude[d] from prosecuting or pursuing… claims against President
Trump, related individuals—including, without limitation, family and
filing jointly.’ It’s a get-out-of-jail free card forever.”
“Just last week, the President
posted another rant on social media, lambasting judges who had the
audacity to follow the law instead of catering to his whims. After
claiming his Supreme Court appointees have ‘shown so little respect’
because they ruled against him, President Trump said federal judges
should ‘be loyal to the person that appointed them.’ In fact, judges
take an oath that they will administer justice ‘without respect to
persons’ and ‘will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all
the duties…under the Constitution and laws of the United States.’
Nowhere in the oath does it say that judges are beholden to the
president who nominates them.”
“Nonetheless, President Trump
continues to nominate his personal attorneys to serve as judges. Matthew
Schwartz, who we will hear from this morning, is the third personal
attorney of President Trump who he has nominated to a circuit court
seat, following the nominations of Emil Bove and Justin Smith.”
“For aspiring judges not lucky
enough to become one of the President’s personal attorneys, they can
jockey for President Trump’s support in another way: supporting his
baseless legal arguments. Benjamin Flowers, who is also before us today,
fits that bill. In one amicus brief, he challenged Pennsylvania’s
administration of the 2020 election. Why? Because President Trump lost
the popular vote in Pennsylvania and was trying to overturn the
results.”
“President Trump is disappointed
in the Supreme Court Justices he appointed during his first term. While
they are reliable and conservative, they occasionally rule against him.
For Donald Trump, this is an unforgivable act of disloyalty. So, in his
second term, he demands that his appointees bend a knee, kiss the ring,
and demonstrate their blind loyalty to him. President Trump is now
putting forward nominees who have shown that they are willing to ignore
the rule of law so long as they follow his agenda.”
“That is in direct conflict with
what is required of federal judges. We should have confidence that
jurists will be neutral arbiters who rule without fear or favor. But I
am deeply concerned that President Trump tapped today’s nominees because
he believes that they will ‘be loyal to the person that appointed
them.’”
Video of Durbin’s opening statement is available here.
Audio of Durbin’s opening statement is available here.
Footage of Durbin’s opening statement is available here for TV Stations.
-30-
And with this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR:
