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And finally, when we started planning this item, we could squint and see how the GOP approach just might work. But we think that the $1.776 billion slush fund brought that line of thinking to a conclusive end. The billion-dollar grift is going to be the bright sun in the universe of grift, outshining all else by many orders of magnitude. It's like this famous cartoon about notorious Gilded Age spoilsman Richard Croker:

All you have to do is replace "CROKER" with "TRUMP, $1.776 Billion."

In the end, the slush fund is just so egregious, and is such obvious self-dealing. Even if you believe California is committing fraud (beyond the usual level of Medicare fraud that every state deals with), nobody has suggested that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is personally lining his own pockets.

So we think, on corruption/fraud, it's going to be "advantage Democrats" for the rest of the cycle, and beyond. (Z)

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Both the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, and the Democrats, led by no one, are trying to hammer out their midterm messaging. And both sides are getting pretty serious about the same issue, albeit a slightly different word for it on each side. To wit, the Democrats think that "corruption" is a potential winner, while Trump and the Republicans quite like "fraud."

We'll begin by talking about the Democrats' side of that, since they will have an embarrassment of riches to choose from.

Here's a list of ten instances of corruption from Trump and other prominent Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list, by any means, and we are attempting to include both recent examples and particularly egregious examples (of course, some examples are both recent AND egregious):

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Here is the backstory. Trump sued the IRS for $10,000,000,000.00 because IRS supposedly leaked his tax returns. He also filed a couple of other lawsuits against the government. The IRS had to respond to the lawsuits. Instead of saying: "Buzz off, see you in court," the agency, which is ultimately under Trump's control, said: "Let's make a deal. We will give you $1,776,000,000 ($1.776B) to settle all the lawsuits." So, Trump was effectively negotiating with himself, which may be the only way he can actually come out on top in a negotiation. Trump the defendant wanted the problem to go away so he offered Trump the plaintiff a great deal and Trump the plaintiff took it.

The nature of the deal is that Trump gets a giant slush fund run by a secret board Blanche appoints (but that Trump can fire) and which makes secret decisions about what happens to that money. One thing that seems likely is that the Jan. 6 rioters who tried to overthrow the government by force will get some of it. There were 1,600 of them. Suppose each one gets, say, $100,000. That would leave $1,540,000,000 in the slush fund for Trump to do whatever he wanted. Rioters happy, Trump happy, Raskin unhappy, but you can't please all the people all the time.

At the moment, some of the details are fuzzy, presumably intentionally so. Most obviously, it's not clear who can, and cannot, lay hands on the money. Reportedly, the "settlement agreement" bars Trump and his two sons (i.e., the parties to the now-dropped lawsuit) from claiming any portion of the fund. But the Trumps have spent their whole lives doing end runs around rules like this. For example, what if the secret committee decides that the Trump Organization has been damaged to the tune of $1.2 billion? Well, that payment would not go to the Trumps, technically, it would go to the "person" that is their S-Corp. And yet, the money would end up in their pockets, anyhow. Alternatively, this is also a president who has claimed that [THING X] is true of some amount of money, and then moved on to [THING Y] once attention died down. For example, does anyone know anymore where the ballroom donations went, or whether they will ever actually be used on this project? Or where all the inaugural celebration funds went? We certainly don't.

Will this scam work? Who knows? George Washington didn't try to rip off the government. Neither did John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or any other president until now. Could someone stop this? Well, there may be a few potential obstacles:

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Yesterday, Donald Trump's lawyers saw the writing on the wall and realized his and his kids' "lawsuit" against the IRS was going to be carefully investigated by the judge in the case, which would put his latest, greatest grift at risk. So, his lawyers filed a "notice" dismissing the fake case with prejudice (notice is in quotes, because it should be styled as a request to dismiss the case). Moments thereafter, Trump's former personal attorney, and current acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the official creation of a $1.776 (get it?) billion slush fund to be doled out by a committee appointed by Blanche. Supposedly, anyone who has felt they've been wronged by the Justice Department is eligible to receive some funds. But you should take that promise with several grains of salt.

Such flagrant and large-scale grift, and all in one fell swoop, has no real precedent in American history. Wherever Boss Tweed, the Teapot Dome guys and Spiro Agnew are right now, they're surely impressed.

If you tried to put this into a movie, the audience wouldn't buy it. But you can't make this stuff up. Really. If you don't believe us, check the story at The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, ABC News, CNBC, or Vox. They can't all be wrong. But if you don't trust any media outlet, then how about a press release from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee? Here is the first paragraph of Raskin's statement:

Donald Trump is orchestrating a $1,700,000,000 fraud on the American taxpayer to line the pockets of his MAGA political allies, another installment in his ongoing effort to turn the federal government into a personal cash machine for his unpopular extremist movement. This is a massive and unprecedented presidential plunder of the American people. Worse still, this is only the beginning - a declaration that the prior payouts were just a down payment, and that he now intends to earmark billions more in taxpayer dollars for his political allies, sycophants and private militia of unemployed insurrectionists.

Nice that Raskin wrote the number out in full rather than writing $1.7B. Makes it look bigger. Raskin should have written $1,776,000,000.00 though, with the silly number tricks and the "cents."