Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told my TNR colleague Greg Sargent earlier this week that House Democrats would introduce a bill blocking the slush fund and similar efforts in the future, and that they would file a discharge petition to get around Republican House leaders who would otherwise block a vote. “We need to put Republicans on the spot as to whether or not they are going to endorse this rank corruption,” Raskin told Sargent, “or whether they are going to stand up for basic constitutional values.”
We now have a text of that Democratic bill, courtesy of Axios’s Andrew Solender. It bars the use of any federal funds for the settlement slush fund, and says that in future no “compromise settlement or award” may be given to a president, vice president, their families, a president-owned entity, a Cabinet member, a political appointee, etc. In addition, no future settlement can be paid alleging harm from the January 6 riot, the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, or any other civil action that was “dismissed with prejudice.”
There remains the matter of Trump’s canceled audits. But are they really canceled? The indemnification language forbids prosecutions and various types of claims, but it doesn’t include the word “audits,” suggesting the prohibition affects penalties but not investigations. I note further that the IRS is not a signatory to the agreement, and that Attorney General Todd Blanche probably lacks the legal authority to cut any such deal without the IRS. “He is not a party to the case,” observe Anna Bower and Eric Columbus on Lawfare, “and he is not exercising any authority delegated to him by the settlement agreement.” Starting in two and a half years, any Justice Department “freed from Trumpian political constraints would likely treat Blanche II as presumptively invalid.”
