What did Donald Trump do today?
He floated the idea of just taking $230M directly from the Treasury for himself.
The New York Times reported today that Trump was considering demanding a $230 million "settlement" from the Department of Justice to compensate him for its investigations into his theft of classified materials and his illegal attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
Trump is the head of the executive branch, and all of the top officials at DOJ—the people who would, in theory, have to approve it—are his former defense lawyers. So in other words, Trump is floating the idea of simply giving himself $230 million out of the Treasury because he personally believes he's entitled to it. One legal expert cited in the NYT story called it a "travesty" and that "the ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”
In fact, that's almost exactly how Trump himself put it when reporters asked about it.
REPORTER: —the Justice Department, are you asking them to pay you compensation for the federal investigation that happened to you, and how much are you asking for?
TRUMP: Oh, for the — I guess— they probably owe me a lot of money for that. Yeah, that's true, that's very interesting. …As far as the all of the litigation, everything that's been about, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money. …And you know that decision would have to go across my desk, and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself. In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly.
The DOJ does, on rare occasions, enter into these kinds of settlements—but only when actual wrongdoing has been committed against a genuinely innocent target. But in reality, Trump is still liable for prosecution for the extremely serious federal charges pending against him when he returned to office. The indictments were dismissed for technical reasons when special counsel Jack Smith resigned on the eve of Trump's return to office, but the vast amounts of evidence, ranging from the boxes of classified documents Trump hid in a Mar-a-Lago toilet to Trump's out-in-the-open attempts to thwart the certification of President-Elect Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump also mused about donating the money to charity, or using it for the White House. Trump is legally forbidden from running a charity in New York state because of his fraudulent abuse of the now-defunct Trump Foundation, and in the past 48 hours he has illegally demolished almost the entire the East Wing of the White House.
Why does this matter?
- Even by Trump's standards, this is corrupt.