Acting AG Blanche backs away from ‘slush fund,’ but preserves Trump’s IRS audit shield
When Donald Trump withdrew his outlandish $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS two weeks ago, the president soon after received two scandalous rewards. The first was the creation of a $1.766 billion compensation fund, which was quickly condemned by members of both parties as a “slush fund” that could benefit the White House’s political allies.
In recent days, the administration, facing fierce bipartisan pushback, backed off its plans for the fund, and on Tuesday afternoon, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed to a House Appropriations Committee panel, “We’re not moving forward with the fund. Period.”
The comments were meant to be definitive, but he did not end the larger discussion. For one thing, when Democratic Rep. Grace Meng of New York pressed Blanche on whether he could commit in writing to the demise of the fund, he balked, arguing unpersuasively that such a move would be unnecessary. For another, there are a variety of pending legislative measures designed to ensure that the fund is dead and that nothing like this ever happens again, and those proposals are still likely to receive votes on Capitol Hill in the very near future.
But then there’s the other reward the president received after withdrawing his IRS civil suit. MS NOW reported:
Though he said the “anti-weaponization” fund is not moving forward, Blanche affirmed that the rest of the Trump-IRS settlement remains intact, including the addendum, which grants Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from all existing IRS tax audits.
In recent weeks, the “slush fund” controversy eclipsed the IRS audit shield, which was understandable given the severity of the corruption surrounding the fund, its creation and its future.
But this surviving part of the deal is still extraordinarily important. Indeed, from Trump’s perspective, it’s arguably more important.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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