‘Straight Grift’
Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams
Trump filed the administrative claims—which are submitted to
the department for potential settlements to prevent lawsuits in federal
court—before he returned to the White House earlier
this year, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper. However, the
president nodded to the legal battle in public comments at the
White House last week.
 |
| Actually, the whole family did, looting the Trump Foundation for personal gain. They agreed to a plea deal with Attorney General Letitia James in 2019 that required the dissolution of the Foundation, a $2 million fine and restrictions on the family from ever starting another charity. Trump recently ordered the Justice Department to bring felony charges against AG James to retaliate for her various successful prosecutions of Trump |
“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, I’m sort of suing myself. I don’t know,” Trump continued. “How do you settle the lawsuit? I’ll say, Give me X dollars, right? And I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit. It’s a great lawsuit. And now I won—it sort of looks bad. I’m suing myself, right?”
As the Times detailed Tuesday:
The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a
number of purported violations of his rights, including the FBI and special
counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections
to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They
spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.
The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the FBI of violating
Mr. Trump's privacy by
searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified
documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in
charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.
In addition to the deputy attorney general, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division can sign off on such settlements. That post is currently held by Stanley Woodward Jr. As the newspaper noted, Woodward previously represented not only Walt Nauta, the president’s co-defendant in the classified documents case, but also “a number of other Trump aides, including Mr. Patel, in investigations related to Mr. Trump or the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.”
A White House representative referred questions to the DOJ,
where spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said, “In any circumstance, all officials at
the Department
of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials.”
Meanwhile, Pace University professor Bennett Gershman told
the Times: “What a travesty... The ethical conflict is just so
basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”
“And then to have people in the Justice Department decide
whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who
serve him deciding whether he wins or loses,” he added. “It’s bizarre and
almost too outlandish to believe.”
Congressional Democrats, lawyers, journalists, and other
critics also weighed in on Trump’s reported conduct on social media,
condemning it “corrupt and impeachable,” “straight grift,” and “straight up extorting the Justice Department and looting
taxpayers.”
“It’s hard to think of an action more purely corrupt than a
president ordering the executive branch to pay him hundreds of millions of
dollars,” said David French, a Times columnist
and visiting professor of public policy at Lipscomb University. “I cannot wait
to read the MAGA defenses of this (and there will be many). They’ll display
Soviet levels of sycophancy.”
People’s Policy Project president Matt Bruenig said that
“suing the government in your personal capacity and then having the government,
which you run, settle the lawsuit with you for money is the true infinite money
trick.”
Matthew Miller, the US State Department spokesperson
during the Biden
administration, suggested that
“this would be the most corrupt act in presidential history. No complicated
schemes, no outside actors, just a straight-up looting of the taxpayers to put
$230 million in Trump’s pocket.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said
in a statement:
It's difficult for a president who spent the past 10 months
behaving like a wannabe dictator and demonstrating his contempt for the law to
surprise us, but Donald
Trump has managed to do it today. Instead of being content with
getting away with his lawless behavior, Trump is now brazenly demanding
compensation from taxpayers for having the audacity to treat him like a public
servant who can be held accountable for wrongdoing.
There is no other way to put it: The authoritarian demagogue we call our
president is drunk on power, and there is no amount of money that can satiate
this grifter's appetite for hoarding wealth instead of using his presidency to
serve the good of the country. This disgusting behavior must be called out and
stopped.
The reporting came on day 21 of a federal government
shutdown over congressional Republicans‘ refusal to
reverse healthcare cuts expected to negatively impact tens of millions of
Americans.
“Trump is now openly shaking down HIS OWN JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
for hundreds of millions of dollars to line his pockets… while claiming there’s
not enough money for Americans’ healthcare,” declared US
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “He has no shame. He is openly and boldly corrupt.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said:
“What does Donald Trump need more of OUR money for? I guess it’s good to be
president when you can bully, intimidate, and shake down every institution in
this country, including now the Department of Justice. This is what a mob boss
looks like.”
Democrats on the US House Judiciary
Committee were similarly critical, calling
it “the ultimate Shutdown Shakedown.”
“Donald Trump, who’s put more than $3 billion in his pocket
since returning to the White House, now wants to have ’his’ lawyers at the DOJ
to pay him $230 million in the middle of the GOP government shutdown,”
the panel members said. “While tens of millions of Americans desperately try to
pay for groceries, healthcare, and childcare, Trump is robbing America blind.
This is exactly why the Constitution forbids the president from taking any
money from the government outside of his official salary. This is Donald Trump
First, America Last—the Gangster State at work, billionaires shaking
down the people.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.),
the panel’s ranking member—and manager of Trump’s historic second
impeachment—is launching an
investigation into the potential settlement, citing the US Constitution’s
domestic emoluments clause.
Like the committee’s Democrats, critics pointed to the
various ways Trump and his family have cashed in on the presidency, from
his Qatari jet to their
cryptocurrency moves.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich concluded Tuesday that “America’s Grifter-in-Chief knows no bounds.”
