How Bad It Really Is

Even normally temperate legal experts and political observers are aghast at the ways in which the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” deal — and its broad release of claims against Trump, his family, and his businesses — crosses into new territory of venality, graft, and abuse of power (even for Trump).

• Former DOJer Jennifer Ricketts: “I have never heard of the department ever being willing to grant blanket immunity. That seems blatantly corrupt. It’s a shocking gift to the president.”
• Barbara A. Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center: “Presidents have had corrupt, even criminal, family members. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Trump family in the level of graft achieved. … They have won the presidency twice, emasculated Congress, created a supportive high court, and reshaped the law and institutions to absolve them of any wrongdoing, while making billions of ill-gotten dollars.”
• Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck: “I am, by training and disposition, a person who writes about doctrine. I try (sometimes, to significant criticism) to avoid emotional pleas. But I am asking you, today, to care about this story in a way that may well be disproportionate to the volume of media coverage it is going to get.”

Why Challenging It in Court Is So Hard

Police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 filed a lawsuit in federal court in D.C. yesterday to challenge the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” and the case was assigned to iconoclastic senior U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon. But the path for legal recourse remains obscure and difficult, most legal experts agree:

• University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Bagenstos: “It is really difficult to think about how to frame a judicial challenge to what the president has done here. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying, and that doesn’t mean something might not succeed.”
• Lawfare: “What makes this particular episode so unsettling is that it’s not clear how it would be stopped. The legal avenues to challenge it are untested and the standing hurdles are formidable. Meanwhile, the legislative appetite to act—at least in this Congress—is not yet apparent. By the time a future Congress might try, nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds may be largely gone, dispersed to recipients whose identities may never be publicly known.”

Don’t Hold Your Breath

There are some rumblings on Capitol Hill that Senate Republicans increasingly concerned about the GOP’s prospects in the midterm elections may impose some restrictions on the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Punchbowl reports:

But it’s unclear how Republicans plan to impose eligibility restrictions on the ‘weaponization’ fund. They’re especially concerned about potential taxpayer-funded payouts to Jan. 6 rioters convicted of violence against cops, as well as the overall political optics of the fund. This was a big discussion point at the Republicans’ lunch meeting on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in the GOP-controlled House, Judiciary Committee Republicans rejected Democratic efforts to subpoena Trump administration officials involved in creating the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” 

Like Pigs to the Trough

Among the various charlatans, ne’er-do-wells, pardoned criminals, and others eyeing the $1.776 billion in the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”:

• Former Trump I official Michael Caputo became the first person to attempt to file a claim, for a cool $2.7 million.
• Mark McCloskey, the gun-toting pro-Trump lawyer who comically defended his St. Louis home during the George Floyd protests, is considering applying.
• Expelled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), whose sentence was commuted by Trump, doesn’t want compensation, just an apology.
• Pardoned Jan. 6 defendant Yvonne St Cyr: “I hope I get $10 million but the dollar collapses like it should.” 

That’s just beginning.

Polis Censured for Freeing Tina Peters

By an overwhelming vote, the Colorado Democratic Party censured Gov. Jared Polis (D) for commuting the prison sentence of Big Lie purveyor Tina Peters.

‘Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf’

The Trump DOJ obtained an indictment of a former federal prosecutor in Florida for allegedly stealing an electronic copy of the still-sealed Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

The four-count indictment of Carmen Mercedes Lineberger was handed down May 19 and unsealed on May 20 in the Fort Pierce Division of the Southern District of Florida, where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is the only judge. It is Cannon who has corruptly sealed the report and kept it from public view since before the 2024 election. Her decision to do so is currently on appeal.

Lineberger allegedly emailed DOJ files, including the sealed report, from her work account to her personal account last year, using file names like “Chocolate_Cake-Recipe.pdf.” The file name for the sealed report was allegedly “Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf.”

The case against Lineberger, who pleaded not guilty yesterday, was brought by attorneys from outside the Souther District, where Lineberger had previously worked.

Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, who was originally assigned the case, recused himself in an order this morning. He did not give a reason, but he approved the search warrants for Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Orders Compliance With PRA

U.S. District Judge John Bates of D.C. ordered White House aides to continue to abide by the Presidential Records Act despite a DOJ memo that declared the law unconstitutional. Bates, not known to be a show horse, started his opinion with an Orwell quote: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

Trump’s Obsession With Colossalism

Good news and bad news on Trump’s effort to remake the nation’s capital in his gaudy image:

• The Good: Senate Republicans are running away from Trump’s vanity ballroom project and are on the verge of killing off funding for it. The funding was included in the reconciliation bill, but the Senate’s parliamentarian ruled over the weekend that it violated reconciliation rules. Rather than rework the language, the provision is going to be dropped, largely because of a lack of GOP support, even to get to a bare 50 votes.
• The Bad: The Trump administration plans to proceed with constructing the president’s monumental 250-foot arch commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday without approval from Congress. In a sign of some desperation, the administration is citing a century-old law authorizing a D.C. project that was never built as already giving it congressional authority to build the arch.

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

President Trump’s corrupt $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is the gift that keeps on giving … to Trump.

New details continue to dribble out about the so-called settlement agreement resolving Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.

Foremost among them: A thin, shoddily drafted single-page document dated May 19 and signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that purports to release any claims that the IRS might have against Trump, his family and his businesses:

The date of the release, quietly posted on the DOJ website early yesterday, is important. Reporting over the past few days had suggested that the settlement agreement would include some sort of release of Trump, or at least abandonment of the IRS audits of Trump, where he faced a potential penalty of as much as $100 million. But no such language appeared in the settlement agreement that was dated May 18 and released the same day. It’s not clear if the apparent side agreement the next day was planned all along, was a rushed make-do in reaction to Trump ire over the terms of the settlement agreement, or was the result of some other chicanery. The odd circumstances also raise questions about the enforceability of the side agreement, since Trump’s lawsuit was dismissed the day before the side agreement was reached.

Notably, the release is so broad and poorly worded that it left some legal commentators wondering if it covered not just any tax cases against Trump, which is bad enough, but any other criminal conduct. It uses the ill-defined and loaded terms “Lawfare and/or Weaponization” in a way that seems sweeping and unlimited. The better reading of the side agreement is that by its own terms it covers only claims by the IRS and Treasury Department, who were defendants in the Trump lawsuit, which would seem to limit it to tax-related matters. Still, the Blanche-signed document is vague, loose, and imprecise in ways that invite over-broad interpretations and future legal wrangling over what it means, which may not have been by accident.

The president’s former personal attorney granting him sweeping release from government claims against him is a stunning conflict of interest unheard of in past administrations. It comes less than a week after a CNN report that as soon as Blanche arrived at the Justice Department last year, he was told by the DOJ’s top ethics lawyer that he would have to recuse himself from matters involving Trump personally. The DOJ said then that Blanche was complying with his ethical obligations.

Among the other developments:

• The IRS thought it could successfully defend the Trump lawsuit against it. The NYT reports on a previously undisclosed memo to that effect:

I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.

• The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” lacks the rigorous controls that are typically put in place for compensating victims, Bloomberg reports. “They’ve apparently just decided to give money away. That’s what this looks like,” said Arthur Gary, former general counsel of DOJ’s Justice Management Division.
• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wants the testimony of Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s top lawyer until he resigned Monday after the settlement agreement was announced.
• Months ago, DOJ official Ed Martin told a GOP ally that big payouts were coming for the Jan. 6 defendants, though he estimated it would only be $40 million, not the $1.776 billion it turned out to be.

Just In: Facebook Meme Case Settles

A Tennessee man wrongfully jailed for 37 days for posting a meme to Facebook in the aftermath of the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk has settled his case against Perry County, Tennessee and Sheriff Nick Weems for $835,000, his lawyers announced this morning.

Retired law enforcement officer Larry Bushart’s comment on a Facebook post promoting a Kirk vigil in Perry County, Tennessee recycled a Trump meme from a 2024 school shooting in Perry County, Iowa:

Even though the sheriff later admitted he knew it was a preexisting meme about an out-of-state school shooting, he claimed that it was being interpreted as a threat to Perry County High School in Tennessee and sought and obtained a warrant for Bushart’s arrest. Bushart, who lives in a nearby county, was held on a $2 million bond before the case fell apart after widespread media attention.

The settlement, in which the defendants did not admit to fault or liability, is being paid by the county’s insurer. As part of the settlement, Bushart and Weems issued a joint statement today.

“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” said Bushart, who was represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family.”

For his part, Weems sounded unchastened: “As Sheriff, there is no responsibility I take more seriously than protecting the children in our community, who are some of the most vulnerable among us. Ensuring their safety is not just a duty of this office, it is a commitment I carry with me every single day. I am happy to have this matter resolved, and I look forward to continuing to serve and protect the people of Perry County.”

2026 Ephemera

• KY-04: The iconoclastic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was successfully primaried by Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, further shrinking any nominal GOP resistance to Trump on Capitol Hill.
• GA-Sen: In the GOP primary to determine who will challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D), Rep. Mike Collins advanced to the June 16 runoff against Derek Dooley, son of Georgia football legend Vince Dooley.
• GA-Gov: In the GOP primary, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who famously resisted Trump’s effort to overturn the state’s presidential election in 2020 — was squeezed out of the runoff by two election deniers.
• AL-Sen: In the GOP primary, Rep. Barry Moore ran well ahead of Attorney General Steve Marshall, but they’re headed to a June 16 runoff.
• AL-Gov: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) and former Sen. Doug Jones (D) won their respective primaries to set up a rematch of their 2020 Senate race.
• TX-Sen: After dangling for weeks a possible endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R), President Trump threw his support at the last minute to Attorney General Ken Paxton in the May 26 GOP primary runoff.

‘A Government of Laws, Not Men’

In protest of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” an advocacy group for current and former DOJ employees invoked John Adams:

Tonight, Justice Connection projected John Adams’ warning over the Trump banner hung on DOJ headquarters. We are “a government of laws, not of men.” Because this administration is turning DOJ into one man’s sword and shield.

— Justice Connection (@justiceconnection.bsky.social) 2026-05-20T02:47:03.609Z

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.