When President Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in January — over the years-old leak of some of his tax information by an IRS contractor — it seemed like one more lawsuit intended essentially as a marketing ploy and attention-grabbing scheme, much like when he sued journalist Timothy O’Brien for $5 billion 20 years ago over supposed misrepresentations of his net worth (the suit was dismissed).
The reality TV host was once again making television, throwing bombastic demands around in an effort to rile up the viewers (his political base, in this case). Yet that plotline has now resulted in a very real set of consequences. A purported settlement was reached between Trump — who, to be clear, controls both the IRS itself and the Justice Department, the two parties that were ostensibly opposing him in the case — and the government to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” of public dollars that can be disbursed to people who were allegedly persecuted by the DOJ under Joe Biden.
The first request for payment has already come in, from Trump adviser Michael Caputo, who was investigated by the FBI for involvement in Russia’s efforts to help Trump win the 2016 election (an investigation that notably took place during Trump’s first term). Many Jan. 6 rioters have said that they will apply for the potential bonanza, which would come not only on top of pardons for all involved, but of settlements already received by some for having been prosecuted for their role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Another part of the settlement, posted quietly a day after the fund’s creation was trumpeted by the administration, stipulated that the IRS will not now or ever again investigate or seek back payments or penalties from Trump, his business entities, family and undefined associates for tax irregularities that may have taken place in the past. This get-out-of-audits-free card felt like a demonstration of just how free Trump feels to kick our system of government in the teeth.
A lot of people have already pointed out that the weaponization fund amounts to raiding the public coffers to pay people – Trump’s associates and street-level thugs and maybe even Trump himself – for having tried to overthrow American democracy. That is revolting on its own, but my concern is really about what incentives this creates going forward. I don’t see how this isn’t effectively an invitation for additional people to engage in political violence on behalf of Trump’s MAGA agenda.
In a lot of countries that have fallen into autocracy or are sliding that way, unofficial bands of violent supporters are key to the regime’s power. These may be organized as affinity clubs, party organizations, or informal groups of avowed supporters who receive benefits, favors, and even direct compensation. In India, longtime Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often been accused of standing aside or even throwing support behind violent street supporters. Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte openly gloated about using vigilantes and street enforcers as part of his grisly agenda.
If Trump telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in the run-up to 2020 election was understood as a pretty open acceptance of them as his enforcers, this settlement takes that a step further and suggests that they are effectively on the payroll now. In some ways, the setting aside of billions of dollars for such payments is more important than who gets what specific award: As I have written many times before, things don’t actually have to happen in a widespread fashion for them to be a powerful social and political force.
That’s been Trump’s strategy in sending immigration agents to effectively occupy Democratic-run cities around the nation – even if it is relatively unlikely that any given person in any given city will actually face down masked federal agents, the understanding that this can and has happened was meant to make large swaths of people think twice about exercising their rights. Similarly, here, even if this fund is ultimately derailed, the public understanding that people can be handsomely rewarded for defying our system of government could serve as a powerful incentive for it to happen again. With Trump having pre-declared the results of the upcoming midterms fraudulent, and as he toys with an (unconstitutional) third presidential run, I worry that our elections won’t face subversion by just government actors but also by private thugs urged on and supported by the administration.
I have often rolled my eyes at comparisons that people love to make between the Trump administration and so-called banana republics — a derogatory term for corrupt and despotic 20th-century Latin American governments supported by the United States, in some cases through direct military intervention. The Trump phenomenon is purely homegrown and has many elements distinct to the U.S., including a weird nexus to the powerful domestic evangelical movement.
Nonetheless, I think the administration as it has developed seems increasingly legible to those of us who have studied or encountered corrupt regimes in Central and South America: The self-dealing, the cronyism, the gold statues and now the direct and brazen looting of public funds in a way that blurs the distinctions between the leader and the state. Obviously, a lot of what Trump has done so far has been based on the idea that the executive branch belongs to him personally, a belief reflected in his efforts to dictate who the DOJ pursues and decisions to institute massive economic policies like tariffs or cut off funding for states and cities on a whim. This settlement, though, seems an even more brazen statement that he himself is the government.
The fact that this is such a brazen theft of public funds has also somewhat overshadowed the mechanics of what’s taking place here, which is that the president was able to sue a federal agency that is directly under his control — something that the judge was heavily questioning before she was forced to dismiss the case after the settlement was reached — and then engineer a deal that will not get adequate judicial or congressional review. If he’s done it with the IRS, what about other agencies? What would happen if Trump, for example, attempts to sue the DOJ itself over its supposedly improper investigations into his earlier misconduct, and then forces a settlement where he’s exempt from additional prosecution before a judge gets to dismiss it as a nonsensical case? I mean, why not?
While the settlement has been inked, it is important to note that this isn’t a done deal just yet. The House Democrats’ Litigation Task Force filed a motion to stop the settlement. And two police officers who were attacked by the crowd on Jan. 6 have now filed a lawsuit to stop the settlement on constitutional grounds, pointing out that the 14th Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds to “pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” This is an untested legal argument – after all, nothing like this has ever really happened before –, but it’s imperative that it be made, if we hope to still have a democratic system this time next year.
