The two interesting legal challenges to the Trump legal “settlement” slush fund

This blog has previously covered the extraordinary legal suit brought by Donald Trump against his own government and then the extraordinary supposed “settlement” of that law suit.

That “settlement” purported to use a private agreement (not placed before a court) to establish a high-value fund to benefit political allies of the president – including the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol.

It looked as if the legal side of the case was over, and it was now a matter for politics.

But the legal side is not over.

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There are (at least) two legal challenges to what has happened, from different perspectives. Both are legally interesting, as they attack the problem from different legal angles.

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One challenge is from two police officers who were at the Capitol during the attempted insurrection.

You can read their challenge here.

The police Plaintiffs are applying for orders and other court relief to quash the establishment of the fund – primarily on the basis that the federal government does not have the legal authority to do what it is purporting to do.

This appears to be essentially a public law action against the federal government. It is exactly the right sort of case to bring against public bodies exceeding their powers.

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The other case is far more legally ambitious and imaginative, and it has been brought by a posse of retired federal judges, who are “Movants” (lovely legal word) of a motion for the court itself to re-open the case.

This is also exactly the right challenge to bring – but in respect of what appears to have been the abuse of process which led to the supposed “settlement”.

If the Movants succeed then the court will re-open the case and continue with its inquiry into whether there was a real dispute.

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Some abuses of the law are straightforward, and when they occur they usually lend themselves to an obvious remedy.

But the more extraordinary the abuse, the more any remedy has to be especially fashioned.

Here the police Plaintiffs and the federal judge Movants have worked out two different ways to approach the instant situation – one by attacking the outputs (the setting up of the fund), the other attacking the inputs (the way the supposed litigation ended).

I am not an American lawyer, and so I do not know if either case has merit and/or will have traction. But both are interesting ways to get the courts to weigh back in an utter outrage that had looked as if it had escaped the courts.