Loading summary
Transcript29 lines
- [00:01]
A
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.
- [00:44]
B
Donald Trump is shaking all the billionaires down and it was only a matter of time till he started shaking down the United States government Joining me today to discuss the absolute corruption at a level we have never seen is attorney Josh Welch. Let's put up this first post Kyle Griffin is reporting breaking its official the Trump DOJ just confirmed the creation of a 1.776 billion slush fund that can be used to pay Trump allies who claim they've been wrongfully targeted by the Biden admin's weaponization, including reported January 6 insurrectionist Josh is the president allowed to sue his own government to seek taxpayer dollars?
- [01:37]
C
The short answer is no. This has never been done before. If you notice, the amount of monetary damages they're asking for mirrors 1776. In fact, it was tied directly to the 250 year celebration of our country. So the thought that you could have a leak of your tax documents and that you can somehow tie that into 1776 $1.7 billion is comical. There's no correlation between the two. It's like that number was reached by simply grabbing out of thin air.
- [02:14]
B
Is there any precedent for this?
- [02:16]
C
None. This has never happened before where you've had a sitting president that has sued a branch of government that he oversees, especially in a case like this. We haven't even brought up the fact that Todd Blanche was Trump's personal attorney when this lawsuit was initiated, and now he is conveniently the head of the Department of Justice, which would in fact be representing the IRS in this lawsuit. That's a blatant conflict of interest. The rules of ethics clearly would forbid him from participating in this case.
- [02:51]
B
Tell the listener about what prompted Trump's lawsuit and how he was able to secure 1.7 billion. So let's start at the beginning. What prompted this and how did we get to this slush fund well, what
- [03:05]
C
prompted the lawsuit was the leak of his tax returns during the election. And so. But the problem with that is there's a procedure. Anytime the IRS leaks your tax returns, they have an administrative procedure that you go through, and damages can be up to a thousand times per incident. And so there's a process for that. There's no precedent for him suing his own agency that he oversees and asking for that amount of money. And, in fact, in the lawsuit, Trump never even states or justifies why or how he has that much in damages. Initially, he was asking for $10 billion. So this $1.7 billion settlement, the number is simply just. It's to mirror the 1776 birth of our country. That's how crazy. This is literally just absurd.
- [04:00]
B
Okay, so he sues his own government for 10 billion, and then I would assume it goes to a judge. Get us to how we got to this announcement of this slush fund. What happened in court?
- [04:13]
C
So he filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, and then you saw a flood of amicus briefs, and those are briefs filed by, quote, friends of the court that the court can grant permission to allowing different entities that might have an interest in the outcome to file a brief. And so you had this onslaught of briefs that were filed. You could see that Trump's lawyer clearly thought that he wasn't going to succeed on the merits of his lawsuit. And so what they did was they pivoted. Then they said, oh, shit, this case is getting ready to get dismissed, so we better reach some kind of a settlement and take it away from the judge, because the last thing he wants is any kind of meaningful oversight or any meaningful look at whether or not this is lawful. So the settlement is basically him saying, hey, doj, let's settle this thing. Let's get it away from the judge, let's get it away from the court so that we can work this out privately. And it's. It's so blatant in. In the level of deception and fraud, basically, that's going on at the taxpayer's expense.
- [05:25]
B
So he has his attorney, who was his former criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, who is now the acting Attorney general. So they say they withdraw the lawsuit. Am I getting this right? They withdraw it. And then his own DOJ says, in a way, to usurp the court, we are announcing the slush fund. And this slush fund has not been court ordered and. Or mandated. Correct.
- [05:54]
C
Well, see, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Todd Blanche initially represented Trump when he was the plaintiff now, Todd Blanche, represents the Department of Justice. It's unclear, according to the lawsuit, who Trump's personal attorney is in this lawsuit. That's part of it. We don't know that exactly. The docket doesn't reflect who his current counsel is. But Todd Blanche has been on both sides of this. And that's part of. I think what some of these amicus briefs touch upon is the blatant conflict of interest that Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice would have in any way, form or fashion, representing the irs, who is the defendant in this lawsuit, because he was, of course, course, Trump's personal lawyer when this lawsuit was initiated. So he can't be on both sides of it.
- [06:45]
B
So just a question as a layman about the amicus brief, like people in the D.C. area, fellow attorneys or judges, would file a brief and say, this is corrupt. This is crazy. Is that the type of people that file the amicus brief?
- [07:01]
C
That's right. And I think specifically, 93, 94 members of Congress joined in an amicus brief, basically arguing why this case has no merit, why it can't go forward, and also urging the court not to accept the settlement because. And the court can. There is a mechanism. So we've seen the headline today was that Trump moved to dismiss this lawsuit. And he did that because he wanted it out of the purview of the court. He didn't want the court to give any sort of meaningful look at whether or not his lawsuit had any merits. And he sure didn't want the court to have any say in how any kind of settlement was reached or whether or not it was proper. So he dissed, dismissed it. And these amicus briefs are also urging this judge in the Southern District to do what we call a sua spontane to. On your own judge, do not allow them to dismiss this. You can order a hearing and have them show cause as to how this is proper. And the judge has that authority. And that's what these amicus briefs are urging this judge to do in the Southern District, which is do not allow this settlement. Do not allow this dismissal. You have the authority to give some oversight and not allow this corruption to happen.
- [08:10]
B
Okay, and then do we know who decides how this 1.7 billion gets distributed? And if there's any oversight that exists in that process, has any of that been defined or laid out?
- [08:22]
C
The short answer to that is no. We're in such unchartered territory here. All we know is that a $1.7 billion settlement has been reached. All we know is that there's some fun that's been set up for people that were targets of Biden's Department of Justice. That's not defined clearly. And that's the whole point of this really, is that Trump doesn't want it defined. He doesn't want someone to oversee the legality of this. That's the precise point that I think you're trying to make is can this be done? And the short answer to that is no. But this judge is going to have to act or someone is going to have to bring a litigation forward to stop this from happening. Otherwise, this is the problem when you have the Department of Justice that works solely for the President of the United States and not the people.
- [09:14]
B
And the Democrats are moving to block the creation of the 1.776, which, I mean, that's just so unbelievable. These guys act like they're such, you know, big blustering patriots. The billion dollar 1.776 billion dollar fund. Let's pop this up. So Platkin LLP, which is a law firm, says on I Believe this is LinkedIn, we are proud to represent 93 members of the House of Representatives opposing this sham lawsuit and the President's unlawful effort to settle this case before the court can weigh in. It's against the law for the President to, in effect, sue himself and then settle for a huge sum. The court has the power to put a stop to these shenanigans and should do so. We are proud to represent over 90 members of Congress in making that request, said Matthew Platkin, Platkin llp and Norm Eisen, I had him on the show last week of Democracy Defenders Action, co counsel for the Amica Amaki. How do you say that, Josh?
- [10:26]
C
Well, I call it amicus, but they spell it as amici.
- [10:29]
B
So, okay, so what does this filing from Democrats, what are they trying to do? Is there any chance that this filing will succeed?
- [10:39]
C
Well, in essence, Mr. Plotkin and the other individuals involved are telling this judge, do not allow the settlement, do not allow this dismissal. Because there is a provision that even though the plaintiff is moving for a dismissal, the court still has the authority to keep this case alive and to order show cost hearings and make them explain exactly what they're doing, whether or not what they're doing is legal and so forth. And that's a big part of their urging the court. If, if the court doesn't do it, then there's not going to be any oversight here. We're not going to know exactly what happened. We're not going to know the answer to these questions. But I do want to say this. There's a procedure. Anytime your tax records are leaked to anyone, there's a procedure, and you're entitled to up to $1,000 per disclosure. So that gives you a baseline for what maybe damages would be in a case like this. Here, Donald Trump is initially suing for $10 billion. And on top of that, I think that the, this brief points out that Donald Trump's net worth after this disclosure doubled. So after this. So his damages are going to be little, if anything. In fact, his net worth doubled after this disclosure of his tax income records were disclosed to the public. So how he can then say that he suffered $10 billion, much less $1.776 billion, is something that's comical to the extent. It's really not comical. It's just downright fraud. It's never been done. All of this that's happening in today's judicial system is unchartered waters. We've never seen anyone as brazen as this that would just go in and basically rip off the taxpayers. I think we see it in that, in the tariffs, too, for example, where he's just brazen about just stealing money from people.
- [12:43]
B
All right, let's, let's really wrap this up in layman's terms. So Trump sued the government that he controls, and he controls both the plaintiff and the defendant, and they both answer to him, correct?
- [12:55]
C
That's correct. And that's important because under Article 3, in order to even bring a lawsuit, there has to be a case or controversy. And when you control both sides, there's no case, there's no controversy because you're in essence, the same person.
- [13:13]
B
And the judge was about to throw this case out for exactly that reason that I mentioned. And so Trump dropped it to dodge her ruling. And so he is trying to go around the rule of law because he knew this was coming, correct?
- [13:31]
C
That's right. He did not want a federal judge to, to look at the law as to whether or not he could do this, whether or not it was legal, and render an opinion as such. And so what did he do? He asked his Department of Justice, or he told his personal lawyer, rather, let's agree on a settlement, let's dismiss this and get it away from the judge so that we don't have anybody's eyes on this thing. We're going to have $1.7 billion of the taxpayers money that we can basically dole out to these One Sixers and anybody else that claims that they were wronged by Biden's administration, and of course, that's probably a sham. The 1.7 billion is, I'm sure, going directly to Trump.
- [14:11]
B
Yeah. It says here that Ryan researches Congress would never approve it, and it bypasses them entirely via the treasury judgment fund. And the commission distributing the money can keep the recipients secret, and Trump can fire commission members at will with no cause required. January 6th. Writers whom Trump already pardoned are among the expected recipients. Trump himself acknowledged it, quote, looks bad and called it awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself. The fund will stop processing claims on December 15, 2028, conveniently right before the end of his term. Legal experts describe it as unprecedented. No president has ever done anything like it. So, Josh, you've told us what you think about this as an attorney, but as a man who was born and raised in Oklahoma, your whole life around all of these Republicans that talk about the rule of law, law and order and corruption and waste, fraud and abuse. What is your personal take on the hypocrisy of all of the Republicans that still support this brazen criminal that happens to be the President of the United States?
- [15:29]
C
Well, at some point, I. I keep asking myself, when is enough going to be enough for these people? Unless you've just hit the bottom of the barrel, like, at some point. I keep waiting, I keep being somewhat optimistic that someone's going to say, you know, this. This is just too far. He's trying to bilk the taxpayers for a billion dollars. He's suing an agency that he controls. It's clear that it's just a shakedown. The people that live out there, that go to work every day, that live in the middle of the country or live on each of the coast, that work their ass off every day, and they've got kids in school and they're trying to put gas in their car, they should look at this and pause and think to themselves, do we really want this man leading our country? Do we really want to elect leaders that are okay with this kind of stuff that he's doing? Because it's jaw dropping. And we see examples of it day in and day out. And it just seems like at some point there's got to be a realization. And I know I keep thinking at some point Congress or someone's going to step up or the Supreme Court, and every time I think that, I realize it's not going to happen. Nobody's going to bail us out here. No one's going to save us. The only person that can save us is going to be ourselves going to the voting polls and voting for new leadership. It's breathtaking, just to say the least. It's maddening. It angers me that I still talk to people and see people that support this man. I don't know what else to say.
- [17:01]
B
And do you think that these, this law firm, Plotkin, with co counsel Norm Eisen, do you think the rule of law will hold here?
- [17:11]
C
I think that this judge will interfere ultimately with their dismissal of the lawsuit in light of the settlement and in asking questions. I think there's just, it's too blatant to have a sitting federal judge turn a blind eye. Now, where does that go from there? We don't know. But I know here in Oklahoma and in other places, we wouldn't dare file something like President Trump filed in this case out of fear that a judge would strike this down so fast and demand people to give answers as to why this is proper. We just wouldn't do it. And again, that shows the sign of a brazen, just disregard for the law that Trump and anybody associated with his doj, they just don't care. Just simply don't care.
- [18:07]
B
All right, Josh, thanks for joining us and breaking that down, it's just absolutely breathtaking corruption. We'll be back later with more news.
- [18:19]
C
Sam.