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Posted on 05/18/2026 5:26:17 AM PDT by MtnClimber
As you may be aware, early this year President Trump commenced a personal litigation against the federal government, seeking compensation for various alleged wrongs committed against him during the Biden presidency, and even during his own first term. According to this New York Times piece from yesterday, the wrongs that Trump has alleged against the government include “leak of his tax returns during his first term, as well as the investigations into his handling of classified documents after he left office and into his 2016 campaign’s potential ties to Russia.” The amount of damages Trump seeks has been reported as $10 billion.
And then two days ago (May 14) there comes news that there is a tentative settlement in the case. ABC News appears to have been the first with the story. Excerpt:
President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration's "weaponization" of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself. While the settlement is expected to be agreed upon in the coming days, sources caution that the final terms will not be set until they are officially announced.
So how do you feel about that?
You will not be surprised to learn that the New York Times is outraged. Here is an excerpt from their piece linked above:
The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the president’s allies and others investigated by the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., creating an ethical and political minefield for Republicans and the department’s leadership. The unusual plan, which Democrats and former government officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, is being fast-tracked. . . .
So, according to the Times, this potential settlement is “an ethical and political minefield,” and the plan for a compensation fund is “unusual” or, in another place, “highly unusual.” But is it? The Times piece strongly insinuates that this potential settlement is improper because the Justice Department is not really adversarial to Trump at the current moment when he is their boss, and also that setting up a compensation fund for political allies as part of a legal settlement is something unique. But the Times doesn’t provide the reader any further context to make an independent judgment about whether this settlement is “highly unusual” versus the norm for the agency going by the dubious name of “Department of Justice.”
So let me provide some context. In fact prior administrations have regularly used litigation settlements to accomplish goals that they could not get enacted by Congress, including setting up large slush funds to hand out to political allies. Before now this strategy has been almost entirely a phenomenon of Democratic administrations. Conservative critics have dubbed the strategy “sue and settle.” The strategy particularly took off during the Obama presidency, and then exploded under Biden. As far as I am aware, the New York Times has never criticized any of this as long as it was done by their ideological allies in support of causes that they approved.
The “sue and settle” game has several variants. One is where the government gets sued by an ideological ally of the bureaucracy, seeking some outcome that they would like to implement. A quick collusive settlement with the plaintiff avoids the difficulty of going through a notice-and-comment rule making process, let alone the necessity of getting a statute passed by Congress.
There are many hundreds of examples of this phenomenon. Perhaps the most notorious have been instances where lawsuits by environmental groups have been used to restrict economic development of public lands. For example, here is a piece from Real Clear Investigations in February 2024 reporting on Biden administration agreements to remove certain federal lands from oil and gas leasing. The agreements were in apparent contravention of Congressional intent, but accomplished through the form of settlement of lawsuits brought be environmental groups friendly with the administration. Excerpt:
When the Biden administration announced in 2022 that it would remove some 4 million acres of federal land in Western states from oil and gas exploration, environmental groups hailed the decision as a milestone in their fight against global warming. . . . The administration’s move was part of a private settlement of a lawsuit filed by WildEarth and others over the objections of energy consortiums, whose efforts to intervene in the matter were dismissed. . . . A similar thing happened last August, when the Biden administration announced it had agreed to exclude 6 million acres of the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico seabed from exploration to settle a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, including the Sierra Club - an announcement that triggered operational delays for the industry and expensive litigation to overturn. Administration critics say these moves reflect the resurgence of a practice embraced by the Obama administration . . . “sue and settle.” The tactic is simple: An advocacy group sues a federal agency for failing to enforce laws or regulations. Agency officials and the plaintiffs then come to a private agreement and that deal is ratified by the courts via a binding consent decree.
And here is a piece by Donald Kochan from November 2023 that appeared in Bloomberg News, again critical of use by the Biden administration of “sue and settle” tactics to remove territory from potential oil and gas leasing, in this case in contravention of the Inflation Reduction Act. Excerpt:
The Biden administration’s resistance to holding the lease sales for oil in the Gulf of Mexico required of it by the Inflation Reduction Act is the latest example of its disregard for regular constitutional order. And its method could set a dangerous precedent for the future of the rule of law. A tactic dubbed “sue and settle” is increasingly allowing powerful interest groups to use the courts system as a pawn in developing environmental law without Congress. It works as follows: An interest group sues a friendly administrative agency, claiming the agency has violated the law. Rather than seek dismissal of a likely meritless claim, the agency settles, because the settlement agreement is a way to avoid a court setting limits on doing what the plaintiffs request, to exceed its authority, and to impose new rules—without going through the normal order of deliberative processes.
Another variant of the Obama/Biden “sue and settle” program involved the creation of huge slush funds to pass out to political allies. As one big example, after the 2008/09 recession, the Obama administration brought a series of completely phony cases blaming the recession on big banks. All of them settled, many for multi-billions of dollars. Here is a report from James Copland of the Manhattan Institute from March 2015 discussing several of those settlements. One big settlement was with Bank of America. From Copland’s description of that settlement:
The $16.65 billion Bank of America settlement resolves civil claims with the federal government and various states; $9.65 billion of this amount is allocated [to government agencies] as follows: . . . On top of these government payouts, the Bank of America settlement forces the bank to allocate $7 billion to “consumer relief” credits, including:
• Loan principal write-downs, with a cap of $2.15 billion for nonperforming loans and $3 billion for performing and home-equity loans (“extra” credits can be awarded under certain conditions)
• Loans underwriting new “affordable housing” developments, with a minimum of $100 million allocated (and substantial extra credits awarded on a dollar-for-dollar basis to discharge toward the $7 billion consumer-relief total)
• Grants to community-development and housing groups; the bank must give a minimum of $50 million to community-development funds or institutions, $30 million to legal-aid groups fighting foreclosures, and $20 million to various government-sanctioned housing-activist groups. . . .
In other words, some $7 billion from that one settlement alone went to slush funds doled out to delinquent debtors and left-wing advocacy groups friendly to the administration and Democratic Party. And that’s just one settlement. All of the big banks entered into similar settlements. For some more, check out my February 2016 post “The Latest In The Endless Series Of Bank Shakedowns.”
So no, New York Times, there is nothing “unusual,” let alone “highly unusual,” about the government using settlement of a litigation to set up a slush fund to pass out to political friends and allies. The only thing unusual is the use of this strategy by a Republican President. It took him a while, but it looks like he finally figured out that two can play this game.
I should mention that I am not a fan of this business, no matter which side is practicing it at the moment. But the only way to get rid of such tactics will be for the likes of the New York Times to criticize their own side, which they will never do. When they give their own side a pass, and then claim that Trump is doing something unique and unheard of, it only makes themselves look ridiculous.
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Manhattan Contrarian ping
This has been going on with the EPA and environmental organizations for years. They could basically change the law through this scheme without Congress.
Wow, really compelling argument, isn't it (even if not backed up by the facts)?
We are, after all, living in "highly unusual" times!
If that's the best argument they can muster...
Regards,
“…officials criticized as a vast political slush fund financed by taxpayers, is being fast-tracked. . . .“
No. USAID was vast and criminal. This is neither.
The New York Slimes are the masters of hypocrisy.
Whatever semblance of ‘journalism’ they ever possessed at any point in their history... Disappeared decades ago from the pages of that pathetic leftist propaganda rag.
1.7 Billion is not enough for the political prisoners held under the Biden Regime.
If I understand it:
The “sue and settle” game has several variants. One is where the government gets sued by an ideological ally of the bureaucracy, seeking some outcome that they would like to implement. A quick collusive settlement with the plaintiff avoids the difficulty of going through a notice-and-comment rule making process, let alone the necessity of getting a statute passed by Congress.
/
This is what destroyed the forestry industry, and fishing and agriculture as well.
The watermelon tango is the euphemism I use.
Watermelon tango choreography , used to achieve a nefarious predetermined helgian goal.
The suits should be suspended until Trump and his appointees no longer guide settlement.
All such settlements should have to be approved by Congress.
I remember being vaguely aware of these kinds of things practiced nearly universally by the Left, but was only on the edge of understanding the dynamic.
I try to keep up, but there is a firehose of various current events, and I took notice of this when I first became aware in 2022, but...got swept up and never looked back at it.
This is wholly disgusting. There is something deliberate and openly manipulative of the system that I find repellent.
To quote the Manhattan Contrarian:
"...I should mention that I am not a fan of this business, no matter which side is practicing it at the moment. But the only way to get rid of such tactics will be for the likes of the New York Times to criticize their own side, which they will never do. When they give their own side a pass, and then claim that Trump is doing something unique and unheard of, it only makes themselves look ridiculous..."
I was disgusted by this. I described it to my wife and she had no expression. None at all.
When I asked her if this disturbed her, she said it didn’t because she “didn’t know anything about it” and is only hearing one side of the story from me.
That tells me something about her feelings about politics and it isn’t something I like.
She thinks political things are nothing to worry about. I think these political decisions made at the local, state, and federal levels impact us directly.
I don’t like hearing that from people, especially my wife. She thinks nothing of going to four different supermarkets in search of the best deal on chicken thighs, but doesn’t think it is important to understand why the cost of chicken thighs might be high enough to compel her to do that.
I find that disconnect disconcerting, and that she isn’t the only one “disconnected” like that.
Yep! They're the leader of the pack of those my Tagline refers.
You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
Yep change the rules because now the orange man is doing it. Way to go president Trump, best president ever!
This has been going on for decades.
In the First Trump Administration, President Trump banned the practice.
My brother says the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it.
Maybe this is a way to find a permanent end to “sue and settle”. It was particularly used by deep green eco-types to create horrible rules which are nearly impossible to remove.
I’d like to see him pursue it to get a verdict, or at least to see the settlement require an admission from the agencies, but it’s good that something is being done to compensate the victims of the Dhimmicraps’ war on liberty.
The FIB and CAI fabricated a crime (Russia Collusion Hoax) and tried to frame Trump with it before and after the 2016 election. The FIB then conspired with Capitol Hill Police to SUCCESSFULLY overthrow the Trump administration on Jan 6 2020 (by definition, an Insurrection has to be against the party in power when it takes place). How do you put a monetary value on that? Then the FIB and Secret Service conspired in the failed ass*ssination attempt in Butler PA, and possible other attempts...how do you put a price on that?
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