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This week, we learned that the Internal Revenue Service is considering settling a $10 billion lawsuit with president Donald Trump, who brought the suit against the agency for the leak of his old tax returns during his first term. Perhaps recognizing the optics of such a deal—the president of the United States ordering the leaders of a federal agency, whom he appoints, to personally pay him billions of dollars—would be less than ideal, Trump has supposedly settled on a new idea. In exchange for dropping his IRS lawsuit, the president wants a $1.7 billion compensation fund created that will pay out anyone who alleges the Biden administration “weaponized” the legal system against them. It’s a classic shakedown meant to enrich Trump and his political cronies, yet again.
The creation of this compensation fund, according to ABC News, is a “main condition” for Trump to even consider dropping the IRS suit, plus the $230 million in legal claims he has filed over the 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago and former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The fund apparently will not be allowed to pay out Trump directly if he were to file claims related to these three legal challenges, but entities associated with him are welcome to apply for the money. Oh, and if Trump dreams up a new, unchallenged grievance against the Biden administration, he could in theory file a claim with this compensation fund and be paid out, with taxpayer dollars.
