It seems like all I’m writing about these days is corruption but it’s such a huge story and covered in such scattershot fashion by the MSM, I feel as if it’s important. Here’s another one.
Trump is busily having the U.S. taxpayers pay off his cronies for staying loyal even though they are criminals:
The Trump administration has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle claims from 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page that the FBI and Justice Department illegally entangled him in court-ordered surveillance, according to a court filing and a person familiar with the deal.
Page sued the federal government — along with top FBI and Justice Department officials — in 2020, saying they abused their foreign intelligence surveillance authorities after his travel to Russia drew the eye of the FBI and fueled investigations of then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to the Kremlin. The allegations also provoked Trump’s attacks on the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence agencies, saying they cut corners and broke rules in a single-minded effort to tie him to Russia and damage his presidency.
Solicitor General John Sauer revealed the settlement Wednesday in a filing with the Supreme Court, where Page had pressed his case after losing fights in federal district and appeals courts.
This is a very clever ploy. Sure the government, lose in court and then have Trump’s DOJ “settle” with millions of dollars. Sweet little payoff scam.
And Trump s deploying this for himself as well, having sued the government for a leak of his tax information (despite the fact that every other president has released those voluntarily.) He’ll be approving the “settlement” himself, of course. He personally runs the DOJ and they all admit it:
Lawyers for Donald Trump and the Internal Revenue Service are in talks to settle the U.S. president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the tax collection agency for leaking his tax returns to the media in 2019 and 2020.In a Friday filing in Miami federal court, the lawyers asked a judge to put the case on hold for 90 days “while the parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation.” A pause “could narrow or resolve the issues efficiently,” they added.
[…]
Trump and the other plaintiffs said the leaks caused them financial harm and public embarrassment, and tarnished their reputations and public standing.
Prosecutors charged Littlejohn in 2023 with leaking tax records of Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans to the media, saying he was motivated by a political agenda. Littlejohn later pleaded guilty to improper disclosures, and a judge sentenced him to five years in prison.
Any payout in Trump’s lawsuit would likely involve taxpayer dollars. Trump has said he would donate money collected from the case to charity.
“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information” to the Times, ProPublica and other “left-wing news outlets,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
Think about that. The president and his spawn are claiming that releasing their tax returns caused them “financial harm and public embarrassment.” Shouldn’t the president be so above board that nothing in his taxes could cause him financial harm and embarrassment? Shouldn’t he be an open book?
I’ll be very curious to see which “charity” he gives the money too. Not that it matters. There is no reason for the taxpayers to be on the hook for any of these suits and the nakedly trollish nature of it all should have the American public in total revolt. It appears there needs to be some changes in the law around all of this.
Apparently, we can no longer have even the slightest trust in our leaders that they have enough character not to steal the country blind and say “waddaya gonna do about it?”
Remember, when the NY Times asked why he was ignoring all the ethical norms he (pretended to) follow in the first term, his answer was, “because I found out nobody cared.”
We should care.