Richard Penner3d ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@SeanCasten/116597017246406093

TL;DR

In case you missed it:

1980s: Reagan and Justice #Scalia push #UnitaryExecutiveTheory arguing that the Constitution vests all executive power directly in the President.

2001–2008: #GWBush uses "Unitary Executive Theory" to consolidate security services and justify signing statements on laws passed by Congress.

2014: #Trump stated on air: "If I decide to run for office, I'll produce my tax returns, absolutely... And I would love to do that. He would go on to repeat this during actual campaigns. He did not release them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_returns_of_Donald_Trump

2019 While Trump was president, a man hired under Trump's IRS gave #TaxRecords to the New York Times while Trump was defying a congressional subpoena for records they were allowed by statute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Littlejohn

2020: In Seila Law LLC v. CFPB the Supreme Court claims "the entire 'executive power' belongs to the President alone" and strikes down removal protections for the director of the CFPB.

2024: In Trump v. US the Supreme Court granted presidents broad, near-absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Also, the leaker of the records Congress couldn't get and that Trump promised was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

2025–2026: Over and over, "Unitary Executive Theory" is used to justify a purge of employees and departments Trump deems to be enemies.

2026/01/29: Trump sues his own IRS and Treasury over the leak of tax records that he had previously promised to release himself. He demanded 10⁶ × $10,000 — https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72207870/trump-v-internal-revenue-service/

2026/05/18: Before showing up in court to answer "is Trump just suing himself with our $$$ at stake?" they settled out of court for a reported 10⁶ × $1776 — no Court, no Congress, no Transparency.

Show threadRichard Penner3d ago

Super TL;DR — By weaponizing the Unitary Executive Theory over decades, Trump sued his own administration as a pretext to, with his own lawyers on both sides, “settle” out of court to extract a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded fund with zero public or congressional oversight.

Just corruption at a scale that dwarfs the Teapot Dome scandal, even when adjusted for inflation. Gigascale corruption.

Björn Brembs2d ago
Show threadRichard Penner

Liz Oyer, former pardon attorney for the DOJ says this:

> Hey everybody. I try to bring you the legal news calmly and factually, but today the news is so outrageous that calm is just not possible. Today we witnessed what I would call the greatest abuse of our legal system in history. It rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy between the president and the Justice Department.

> The judge handling the case suspected the lawsuit was a farce. So, she appointed a team of independent legal experts to evaluate the merits of the case. They all agreed that it's nonsense and it should be thrown out. But before the court could toss the case, Trump's lawyers moved to dismiss it voluntarily. Why? Because Trump reached a settlement agreement with the Justice Department, which he controls.

> These five people have total discretion to give this money, our money, to anyone they choose with no oversight, no transparency, and no public input. I don't say this lightly. This is straight up criminal.

> This is a theft of our property. It is a fraud on the American people. It is a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of our government. As the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche ... has a fiduciary duty to protect taxpayer money from false and fraudulent claims. He has abdicated that duty. He has betrayed the American people. He has betrayed his oath to uphold the Constitution.

> Please do whatever you can to spread the word and sound the alarm. Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4bnF4IlufC8

Trump’s $1.8B “anti-weaponization fund”

YouTube
May 19 at 2:48pmWeb
Show threadRichard Penner3d ago

And we have the document at last:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl

It has a case caption on it even though it was not signed or filed with the court before they requested the case be dismissed Doc 52, filed on 2026/05/18).

In the order closing the case, the judge pointed out there was nothing indicating the DOJ had reason to believe this case was not a scam or even that any settlement had been agreed upon. It sounded more like Trump lawyers Brito and Epstein trying to bail out of court before the judge had a change to ask questions.

From the "settlement":

> As sole and complete relief for allegations in the Case and the Pending Agency Claims, Plaintiff President Donald J. Trump, and the other named Plaintiffs in the Case and in the Pending Agency Claims, will receive a formal apology from the United States, ...

FIFA peace prize all over again!

> An accompanying order of the Attorney General, issued within 30 days of the Effective Date, shall establish funding and any other relevant requirements, rules, conditions, terms, and waivers, which shall be treated as incorporated herein.

But the amount appears nowhere in this document!

Five members on the panel, 4 by the AG, 1 by congress, President can remove any so veto power and the panel can act with only 3 members present.

Show threadRichard Penner2d ago

And now we have an additional document signed by Todd Blanche unilaterally extending the "settlement" to forever free the Trump family from audits and lawsuits from the United States for all acts known before Monday.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-198457710

Almost as good as a pardon

Or maybe even better...

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Show threadRichard Penner2d ago

Todd Blanche went before Congress. It's not sounding good... for us.

https://abovethelaw.com/2026/05/the-dojs-1-8-billion-slush-fund-has-a-child-molester-problem/

> VAN HOLLEN: An individual who was pardoned by Trump went on to molest 2 children, & he tried to buy their silence by saying he would give them funds from your slush fund. Can you commit to not making that person eligible for a payout?

> BLANCHE: You're obviously lying

> VAN HOLLEN: I am reporting what he said

> The man in question is Andrew Paul Johnson, a J6 rioter Trump pardoned in January 2025. After his release, Johnson started posting online that he expected to receive restitution money from the Trump administration. A notion Johnson got from DOJ official Ed Martin! When Johnson was arrested and ultimately convicted for the [SA] of two children, it came out that Johnson promised “Trump bucks” to his victims if they kept quiet.

https://abovethelaw.com/2026/05/president-trumps-personal-lawyer-todd-blanche-reminds-everyone-that-he-is-trumps-personal-lawyer/

> Blanche: I am the Acting Attorney General! The fact that I used to be President Trump’s lawyer is just a fact. DON’T SAY THE PRESIDENT’S FORMER LAWYER WILL DO SOMETHING—SAY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL WILL DO SOMETHING!

> Blanche has a longstanding attorney-client relationship with Donald Trump as a serious conflict of interest now that [Blanche] represents the IRS — claiming to be adverse to Trump personally, unitary executive theory be damned — in a settlement that gives Blanche unchecked authority to distribute almost $2 billion in taxpayer dollars to January 6 rioters. We have a lot of rules set up to avoid lawyers representing clients against former clients. Blanche disregards these because this case — from the start — was just a shifting blob faking an adversarial posture when convenient and dropping it just as quickly when it wasn’t.

The DOJ’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Has A Child Molester Problem

The Acting AG's testimony featured a $1.8 billion slush fund, a specious Obama-era analogy, and a remarkably bad answer about a pardoned J6 rioter convicted of abusing two children.

Above the Law
Show threadRichard Penner2d ago

Victims of the mob Trump organized and sicced on Congress sue to say everything about Trump's slush fund is illegal.

Article:

https://abovethelaw.com/2026/05/capitol-police-officers-sue-to-block-trump-slush-fund-for-rioters/

Docket:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73367403/dunn-v-bessent/

Capitol Police Officers Sue To Block Trump Slush Fund For Rioters

Hopefully just the first suit.

Above the Law
Show threadRichard Penner2d ago

Mike Masnick of TechDirt finds that this "settlement" purports to undo about $100 million dollars of Trump's tax liability for past ... um.. probably not completely fraudulent oopsies.

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/20/trump-sued-himself-and-walked-away-with-a-100-million-tax-debt-erased/

This is the immunities in the May 19 "order" by Todd Blanche https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441216/dl following the May 18 "order" establishing the size of the fund at $1.776 billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441086/dl following the May 18 "settlement" https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl which the judge on May 18 wrote that the case was closed without reference of any settlement. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.706172/gov.uscourts.flsd.706172.62.0_4.pdf

Trump Sued Himself And Walked Away With A $100 Million Tax Debt Erased

There were two rumors last week regarding the supposed “settlement” of Donald Trump’s ridiculously problematic lawsuit against his own IRS, asking for $10 billion. The first was t…

Techdirt
Show threadRichard Penner1d ago

The ever-wonderful @LizDye has a piece that points out that Trump already gave himself $0.23 billion in claims against "the government".

So this latest "settlement" is even less magnanimous than merely being the most corrupt act of any presidency and orders of magnitude more corrupt than the Teapot Dome scandal which still is the canonical example of corruption of an official in U.S. textbooks.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-weaponization-fund

Trump's $1.8b slush fund could turn into giant can of worms

At the very least, it'll make the midterms messy.

Public Notice
Show threadDarwin Woodka3d ago
@Arpie4Math Mob rule
Show threadRichard Penner2d ago
@darwinwoodka Not the self-gratification of the masses by the abuse of pure democracy but the capture of governmental authority by a criminal conspiracy.
Show threadJamesWNeal2d ago
@Arpie4Math You'd think the way Trump works, that her page over at DOJ would have disappeared from the archives.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/pardon/staff-profile/former-pardon-attorney-oyer