Fool Me a Thousand Times …

A confusing mishmash of reporting Monday afternoon inadvertently revealed that Donald Trump can still play Congress and the press like fools.

The flurry of reporting, mostly from Capitol Hill, was about whether the political heat around the corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” had become too much to stomach, especially for GOP senators. The vague news, largely attributed to unnamed White House sources, was that Trump was signaling he “plans to drop,” “pause,” “retreat,” “backtrack,” and “back off” from the slush fund.

Adding an absurdist twist to the afternoon, the Trump DOJ put out a meaningless statement that it would abide by a court order blocking the slush fund.

Note that all the uproar yesterday only dealt with the slush fund — and only with the political furor over the slush fund. That represents only part of the corrupt scheme to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, which has three main elements:

• the slush fund;
• the IRS’ release of Trump et al. from any tax claims that predate the settlement (I should note there’s also an argument that the loose language of the settlement releases Trump et al. from any civil and criminal claims by the U.S. government prior to the settlement date);
• the fraud on the court for some combination of bringing a frivolous claim, collusively settling it, and using the court to launder public funds for Trump’s slush fund.

Despite all the talk on the Hill about the politics of the slush fund, it’s never been clear exactly what Republicans in Congress were going to do about the slush fund and whether it would be sufficient. My understanding is that Trump wanted to include authorization for the slush fund in the reconciliation package (still no publicly available language on any such provision), and Senate Republicans were considering putting some guardrails to prevent payouts to people who assaulted police on Jan. 6, a noble enough but limited goal and hardly the only corrupt aspect of the $1.776 billion slush fund.

What remains unclear this morning, but seems increasingly likely, is that Senate Republicans will merely not include a slush fund provision in the reconciliation bill. That would set up a grim scenario where Congress is silent on the matter, raising the possibility that Trump takes that silence as a greenlight to arrange some off-the-books executive branch funding for it. Some GOP senators want more concrete assurances from Trump that the slush fund is indeed dead, but why would anyone trust such assurances?

In an ideal world, Congress would bar the slush fund and anything like it. We are not, dear readers, in an ideal world.

Even if the Republican Congress stands up to Trump on the slush fund, it doesn’t appear to be preparing to scrutinize, let alone unwind (if it’s possible) the corrupt release of the IRS’ claims against Trump and fam. It’s a huge giveaway — $100 million, by some estimates — under extraordinarily corrupt circumstances. The improper leaking of Trump tax returns by an IRS contractor isn’t a proper justification for dropping all of the IRS claims against Trump, let alone other civil and criminal claims the government may have had against him or his family members.

Separate and apart from the political dimension, the legal side of this fiasco is on its own track regardless of what Congress does or fails to do:

• In Miami, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams set a deadline of June 12 for Trump to explain why the settlement wasn’t a fraud on the court.
• In the Eastern District of Virginia, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema already ordered the slush fund halted, with a hearing set next week in a civil lawsuit challenging the settlement.
• In D.C., a hearing is scheduled for next week in second civil lawsuit challenging the settlement.
• In a third civil lawsuit challenging the settlement, also in D.C., convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau moved to intervene in the case, asserting that he is a claimant to the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and entitled to enforce the settlement agreement.

It’s still unclear how far federal judges can go in invalidating or unwinding the collusive settlement, so I’m not holding these out as surefire winners. The ultimate solution here would be a combination of legal and political guardrails, but we’ve spent a year and half now watching the supine GOP Congress decline to rein in Trump in any meaningful way.

The pattern is familiar.

Trump pushes all of his chips to the middle of the table — a collusive lawsuit, a bogus settlement, a corrupt slush fund, and a get-a-out-of-jail-free card for himself — and then merely signals that he’s pulling back one chip, and official D.C. gets the vapors.

BREAKING … Pulte Named Acting DNI

In a disastrous move, President Trump named Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who has been moonlighting as political retribution czar, as acting director of national intelligence until he nominates a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard.

Jim Comey, Call Your Office

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss of D.C. issued a temporary restraining order barring the National Park Service from interfering with the display of a “86-47” flag near the National Mall, ruling that “86” in the context of this case was not a threat against President Trump: “The question whether “8647” constitutes a true threat cannot be resolved in the abstract, without consideration of context, and, here, the relevant context makes clear that no reasonable observer could have viewed Plaintiff’s display of the flag as a threat to the President’s life or physical safety.”

Pete Hegseth Watch

• Anti-trans policy: In a complicated ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals split on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban on transgender servicemembers, finding that the policy was the result of unconstitutional animus and “the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group,” but struggling with how to respond to Supreme Court’s recents limits on nationwide injunctions.
• Racist and misogynistic promotion policy: In a highly unusual move that undermines merit-based promotions, Hegseth blocked nine Navy captains from becoming one-star admirals, including three women and two Black officers. The final list of 22 promotions includes no women and only two nonwhite officers.
• Anti-press policy: With news outlets still challenging in court the Pentagon’s revamped press policies, the Defense Department has designated its press office a classified space and banned journalists from accessing it.

Another Trump Defeat: Colorado Edition

U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson of Denver blocked the Trump administration from forcing Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research to relinquish its Wyoming Supercomputing Center.

Jackson found that that the broader administration effort to dismantle NCAR — the country’s premier weather and climate research center — came after Colorado failed to release convicted Big Lie promoter Tina Peters when Trump pardoned her: “The inference that retaliation played at least some role in the transfer decision is considerably strengthened by the fact that the federal government simultaneously undertook several other actions adverse to Colorado.”

Freed Tina Peters Spews More Big Lies

In a world where Tina Peters was repentant and chastened by her conviction, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ decision to commute her nine-year sentence could have been justifiable. Nine years or two years or something in between wouldn’t have made much difference.

But she isn’t, and it wasn’t:

Among his many missteps in the case, Polis got himself wrapped around the axle of Peters’ supposed free speech rights, which is a category error in the criminal context. Contrition, genuine remorse, acknowledgement of guilt are key elements in sentencing and pardoning decisions that, because of the underlying conviction, don’t impede on First Amendment rights.

In post-coup America, we remain a long way from truly grappling with the persistence of a powerful cultish movement that includes seditious conspiracists who have already proven their willingness to bring down the Constitution.

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