The Trump slush fund appears to have been aborted – but the real problem about the ‘settlement’ remains

The proposal for a ‘anti-weaponisation’ fund seems to have been dumped.

The acting Attorney General of the United States said at Congressional meeting yesterday that:

“We are not moving forward with the fund.”

Nor indeed moving in any direction with the fund.

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But the fund was a consequence of a more fundamental abuse of power which is still in place, and until that is hacked out there will be other problems.

As set out in previous posts, a contrived and inflated legal case was brought by Trump (and his son and his company) against the United States government, which was then purportedly ‘settled’ between the parties, though without court approval or even recognition.

The settlement – that is a contract – was then used as a legal basis to create rights and obligations of an extraordinary nature.

To allude to the eminent jurist Meat Loaf, one can do many things with settlement agreements, but one cannot do that.

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One provision of the supposed ‘settlement’ was the creation of the ‘anti-weaponisation’ slush fund to benefit various supporters of Trump. This audacious move now appears to have been aborted.

But other extraordinary provisions with a basis on what only a private contract are still in place.

This is an addendum to the supposed agreement:

This is a wide immunity for the plaintiffs – and others! – from more-or-less any action the United States treasury or revenue service could take against them. If the provision had effect, it would fetter the tax authorities, preventing them from doing a whole range of actions.

Such an immunity should, if it exists at all, have a solid legal basis – and should be approved or overseen by Congress.

But to base such an immunity on the shaky-flimsy basis of a private contract without any court recognition is, well, inappropriate.

One suspect that one purpose of the litigation was to get in place a ‘settlement’ agreement, where the opportunity would be taken to place wide-ranging obligations and restrictions on the tax authorities.

As reported in yesterday’s post the court has re-opened that litigation. If the litigation is now stuck out then there will not even be nominally a dispute, and without a supposed dispute there cannot be a settlement.

That would mean the above immunities would go too – to the extent they even exist at law.

So a lot still rides on what the court does with this re-opened case.

The slush fund seems to have gone, but will the rest of the ‘settlement’ go too?

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