The editorial board of The New York Times recently published an opinion that is worth reviewing. The subject is that the President of the United States sued the United States for $10 billion dollars for his alleged wrongful treatment. The Justice Department was intended to be an independent judicial body that enforces our laws, but he removed the Justice Department head and staff with his own appointees. He appointed his own personal attorney as head of this department and then negotiated with his former attorney a settlement of his case by creating a fund of about $8 billion dollars along with a grant of immunity for himself and his entire family, for life, regarding their personal income tax filings.

The New York Times opinion piece It starts off with this observation:

“Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those whom the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will, in fact, reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family, and his allies. Two, the fund continues its pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish its perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.”

Most offensive is the fact noted by the opinion page that:

“To understand who is likely to receive payments, look at who has previously received settlements from the Justice Department. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, received $1.25 million even though he pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, and whom federal agents shot as she and others approached the House floor,  received nearly $5 million,  even though investigators cleared the shooters of wrongdoing. The Trump administration is paying off people who committed violence and crimes, as long as they are Trump allies.”

What is even more shocking is the fact that in exchange for the president’s dropping the suit against the I.R.S., both he and his supporters will receive government handouts. For Mr. Trump, the handout comes in the form of permission to have cheated on his taxes. The government has granted him and his family lifelong immunity from ongoing audits of his tax payments. He has a long history of using questionable accounting maneuvers, and the audits could have cost him more than $100 million, experts have said. Now they will cost him nothing.

“This is the president trying to play every role in the system, acting as plaintiff, defendant, and his own judge and jury to extract extraordinary windfalls,” said New York University’s DeBot, adding that giving broad immunity “stretches beyond what DOJ actually has authority to do.”

As pointed out in a recent Huffington Post article:

“This latest corruption his after the episode involving the construction of a ballroom at the White House. The ballroom’s cost ballooned throughout the process. Trump initially promised it would be entirely privately financed through donations from corporations and rich benefactors and cost $250 million. Then it was $300 million. And then $400 million. By April 2026, after an apparent assassination attempt targeted Trump at the private-venue White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Trump asked Congress for an additional $1 billion in taxpayer funds, putting the total at $1.4 billion, and overwhelmingly financed by the American public.

Like a private equity vulture, he and his administration are stripping the country for parts while the president gets richer. They are taking away health care, food aid, and medical aid to poor foreign countries, selling off public lands, and gutting investments in new technologies and research, and then handing it all back to the rich in the form of massive tax breaks, merger approvals, and contracts for those willing to bend the knee.

Trump, meanwhile, is busy slapping his name on passports, coins, airports, and maybe even an obelisk fit for a Bronze Age emperor, all the while looting the treasury to pay off his supporters and declaring himself and his family above the law in perpetuity.”

The Times warned: “It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change the election rules to keep his party in power.”