The Single Most Corrupt Act.

Trump just gave himself $1.8 billion in taxpayer money. There is no oversight, no eligibility criteria, and no one to stop him

On Monday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal defense lawyer in the federal criminal cases against him, announced that the Department of Justice is establishing a $1.776 billion fund to compensate anyone who claims they were "wrongfully targeted" by the Biden administration. The money is real, the structure is finalized, and the legal route that created it is so brazen that it deserves to be walked through step by step.

Step one: Trump sued his own government.

In January, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department over the 2019 leak of his tax returns by a government contractor who has since pleaded guilty. A sitting president was personally suing the executive branch he runs. The judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams, in the Southern District of Florida, noticed the obvious problem: the two sides of the lawsuit were the same side. She gave both parties until May 20 to explain why the case should proceed, given that Trump and his agencies might not be "sufficiently adverse" to each other.

Step two: Trump settled the lawsuit with himself.

Rather than answer the judge's question, the administration moved to drop the suit on Monday. In exchange for dropping it, the DOJ agreed to create the $1.776 billion fund. As part of the settlement, Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization will receive formal apologies from the government. He won’t get money from the fund directly, but he doesn't need to. He just rerouted $1.776 billion of taxpayer money to a slush fund his Acting Attorney General controls.

Step three: Remove the Judge from the process.

When the case was dropped, Judge Williams issued a brief order Monday afternoon saying she was "stripped of jurisdiction" to continue overseeing it. The settlement agreement was never docketed in court, which means there is no "settlement of record" for any judge to review. The judge whose deadline pressure created the entire scheme has not been able to provide any oversight into the agreement.

The $1.776 billion comes from the federal Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury appropriation that Congress established to pay legitimate court judgments and settlements against the government. By routing the slush fund through the Judgment Fund, the administration bypasses Congress's constitutional appropriations power entirely. Congress never voted on this. Congress will never vote on this. Jamie Raskin made the point bluntly on ABC's This Week: "Only Congress has the power to appropriate money, and Congress never voted on creating this $1.7 billion political slush fund." Ninety-three House Democrats filed an amicus brief calling the suit a "collusive" one with "the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history."

Then look at how the fund will actually operate.

There are five commissioners, all appointed by the Attorney General. One is selected “in consultation with congressional leadership,” which is cosmetic. The AG still appoints them, the AG can remove them, and Trump can remove any of them at will.

There are no published eligibility criteria. The DOJ’s release says only that submitting a claim is “voluntary” and that there are “no partisan requirements.” Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School ethics scholar, told CBS News he can’t tell “what — if any — kind of screening mechanism they’re going to use. How they can decide who’s going to get how much money.” There isn’t one in the announcement. There is no statutory definition of “lawfare.” There is no statutory definition of “weaponization.” There is no requirement that a claimant prove harm. There is no requirement that a claimant ever have been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. There is no public list of who is eligible and who is not.

There is no public disclosure of recipients. The fund’s only reporting requirement is a quarterly report sent to the Attorney General — the same Attorney General who appoints the commissioners. The reports are not required to be public. The identities of recipients are not required to be public. The amounts paid are not required to be public. The reasoning behind each payment is not required to be public. The only entity that has to know who got money is Todd Blanche.

There is no independent review. The DOJ said Blanche “or a future attorney general” is authorized to audit the use of the fund. The auditor is the same person who created the fund.

There is a sunset date built to outrun accountability. The fund stops processing claims on December 1, 2028, and shuts down on December 15, 2028, roughly a month before the next president is inaugurated. Anything left reverts to the federal government. The structure incentivizes spending it all before someone other than Trump gets a chance to look at the books. Robert Hubbell flagged the obvious: this is a three-and-a-half-year window for Trump to direct nearly $2 billion to anyone he wants, with no court, no Congress, and no public oversight.

And then look at who the likely beneficiaries are. The universe of people Trump has publicly described as “wrongly targeted” by the Biden DOJ is well-documented and not subtle: the nearly 1,600 January 6 defendants he has already pardoned, members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, election deniers, Trump family members, his own attorneys, and drug dealers.

Even inside the administration, the fund is generating exits. The Treasury Department’s general counsel, Brian Morrissey — a respected attorney — resigned the day the deal was announced. In the legal profession, this is what’s called a “noisy exit”: a lawyer publicly walking away from a transaction he refuses to sign off on. The administration’s own Treasury lawyer looked at the fund, read what it was, and chose to quit rather than be on the paperwork.

Let’s call this what it is. The President of the United States sued his own government. His own former defense lawyer, whom he made Attorney General, settled the case with itself. The judge was cut out. Congress was cut out. The public was cut out. What’s left is a $1.776 billion taxpayer fund with no eligibility rules, no public disclosure, no independent review, and a three-year window to spend it all before Trump leaves office. The likely recipients are the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and the political allies who covered for him during his criminal cases. The man overseeing the fund is the lawyer who defended him in those criminal cases. The Treasury official asked to wire the money quit rather than do it.

For one moment, take the administration's argument at face value. The Biden administration was weaponized, and the victims deserve restitution. We already have a system for that — the same Judgment Fund Trump is stealing this money from. The difference is that the legitimate Judgment Fund process pays out only on court judgments and validated settlements, with public records and statutory rules. Trump doesn't want that. He wants the pot of money without the rules that come with it.

Trump wants to spend your money with no transparency and no accountability. He wants to spend it on the people who attacked the Capitol on his behalf, on the lawyers who tried to overturn an election on his behalf, and on the family members who profited from his presidency. He wants to do it in secret, on a four-year clock, with his personal defense attorney holding the checkbook. And he wants to do it without a single vote in Congress, a single ruling from a court, or a single name disclosed to the public.

The only remedy is to make him pay for this in the midterms and then hold everyone involved accountable.