Congress must block Trump slush fund
We just got word that legislation may be proposed — possibly as early as tomorrow — to block Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA criminals, crooks, and cronies.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Congress, of course, is rife with Trump loyalists who will stand in the way of this essential legislation.
It is absolutely critical that we get the message through to every member of Congress that the American people are demanding a decisive response to the naked shakedown that Trump is attempting to perpetrate against us.
Take action now.
For more about this outrageous slush fund, see our note from yesterday, copied below in case you missed it.
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Oh boy.
In response to Donald Trump’s bogus lawsuit against his own IRS, the regime has concocted an illegitimate slush fund — using $1.8 billion in taxpayer money — from which it intends to disburse massive payouts to assorted Trump cronies, possibly including January 6 insurrectionists.
In case you haven’t seen this news yet, here’s where things stand:
- On January 6, 2021, a violent mob — instigated by Trump himself — stormed the United States Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 presidential election.
- We all saw this. It happened. No amount of historical revisionism by Trump, his political lackeys, and propagandists like Fox “News” can change the truth about that day — one of the saddest and most shameful in our long history as a nation.
- More than 1,500 people were investigated, tried, and convicted for crimes they committed on or leading up to January 6.
- But on the very first day of his second term, Trump pardoned every one of them.
- And now they may get even more of a reward for their “loyalty” to Trump in the form of payouts from an illegitimate slush fund the regime is setting up in response to an absurd lawsuit where Trump basically sued himself.
- Many other people associated with Trump have been investigated and convicted for assorted crimes. Some have openly admitted their guilt.
- They could all get payouts from this slush fund over baseless claims that the justice system was “weaponized” against them.
- Trump and his family may well be the biggest beneficiaries of all, because there is nothing in the slush fund agreement that prevents them from collecting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from it.
How did we get here?
It started with Trump filing a ridiculous lawsuit against the IRS over a leak of some of his tax records while he was president.
A few points:
1. Before Trump, candidates for president willingly released their tax returns as part of trying to show the American people they were worthy of our votes.
2. One normally has to demonstrate that one was harmed in some specific way to win a lawsuit. But not only did Trump get re-elected, he has also — through an unprecedented level of graft and corruption — massively increased his net worth since then. There is no valid argument that he suffered any significant harm from the leak.
3. In America, we have what is known as an “adversarial” system for court cases — meaning the two sides are meant to be opposed. But this case was basically Donald Trump v. Donald Trump, since, as president, Trump runs the entire Executive Branch of the federal government, including the IRS and the Justice Department.
4. Trump knew his lawsuit was a sham. He outright admitted that he would have to “work out a settlement with myself.” It is not a stretch to assume that Trump filed a lawsuit that had no merit just so he could then drop it in exchange for exactly this kind of corrupt payout. It’s a shakedown of the American people, pure and simple.
5. Now Trump is looting taxpayers at the same time his administration claims we can’t afford things like the ACA tax credit that is essential for providing healthcare to millions of Americans.
There is a way to stop this nonsense.
Congress is the branch of the federal government that is supposed to decide how taxpayer money gets spent. It says so right in the Constitution. (You know, that pesky little document the Trump regime and its MAGA adherents seem to forget about whenever they want to do more corruption and crime?)
Public Citizen is among the leaders of an emergency, multi-organizational campaign to demand that Congress assert its legal and ethical duty to shut down Trump’s slush fund before it disburses even a single dollar of taxpayer money to MAGA criminals, crooks, and cronies.
Tell every member of Congress:
Actual people committed actual crimes on January 6. Others in Donald Trump’s orbit — including Trump himself — have committed crimes and engaged in an array of wrongdoing. These insurrectionists and criminals are not victims of a “weaponized” justice system, and you know it. They do not deserve pardons. And they do not deserve massive payouts from an illegitimate slush fund created in response to a bogus lawsuit to reward their “loyalty” to Donald Trump at the expense of American taxpayers. Congress must immediately assert its power of the purse, as granted by the Constitution of the United States, to block the fund from taking any money out of the Treasury and making any payments to anybody.
Click to add your name now.
This is a message for the entire House and Senate, so take action today even if one or more of your members of Congress is a die-hard Trumpist.
Thanks for taking action.
For justice,
- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
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