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- [00:00]
A
Hi everybody out there. Welcome to Morning Shots Live. Coming to you on Tuesday morning as we do every Tuesday morning for the Bulwark, I'm Andrew Egger, that's Bill Kristol. We write the Bulwarks Morning Shots newsletter every Monday through Friday. Comes out at 9ish, 9:30ish. Somewhere in there in your inboxes. And on Tuesdays we come here live to talk about the news. Thanks for joining us. There is a lot to talk about today as usual. Most of it has to do with the precedent that we can't seem to get away from even if we'd like to, even no matter how much we might want to talk about other stuff. But before we do that, before we talk about the president's polling and his institutional support in the party and how this all relates to this really extraordinary settlement fund that we're gonna talk a lot about. We've been talking a lot about. We're gonna talk a lot about. We wanted to first really quick talk about the other kind of horrible headline out of yesterday, which was this mass shooting at a mosque in San Diego, apparently carried out by a couple of young people, a 17 year old and an 18 year old. Bill, can you just talk a little bit about what happened and what we know about it so far?
- [01:04]
B
I mean, we know there was this terrible attack and you know, all attacks are terrible and all murders obviously are terrible, but there's something about an attack on a religious institution, especially one perhaps that has a school on its premises. And so you have those video, that video of the little kids, you know, being shepherded off campus. And it's terrible. So it seems like three people have died. Security guard seems to have behaved really admirably. Someone who's been apparently who had the position for 10 years himself, a Muslim who volunteered to be a security guard to help protect his community and did apparently protect it and perhaps avert many more deaths. So a terrible thing and I trust, I don't want to be political about it, but I will say this. I was pleased to see, I just was googling around a bit this morning. The official Jewish community organization of California, I can't remember its proper name, but it's the kind of umbrella association of the Jewish groups of California. Obviously there's been plenty of tension between Jews and Muslims in the and in this country to some degree over the last years, last decades, last forever. Express a very strong statement of solidarity and sympathy, which is appropriate, I think. I hope that will come from all religious groups. And so a terrible thing and Hope. Well, we've seen it and we've seen attacks on Christian churches, received attacks on synagogues, obviously we've seen attacks on mosques. It would be nice if it all stopped.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hesitate a little bit to weigh in too much about it because I haven't written about it in our newsletter or anything. I don't want to get over my skis or anything. The one thing that stood out to me about this attack and I guess it's just kind of a grim thought. I guess maybe in some ways it's a good thought but it's just strange that we've been in this era of everybody grappling with these mass shootings for so long that everybody's got kind of policies in place for this sort of thing now. And this is an instance where, you know, the policies that this institution put in place exactly to, you know, limit the damage if something like this, God forbid, were ever to happen, seem to have done some good. And I guess that's, I guess in some ways that's a good thing. And some, like you said, the security guard acted heroically. And in some ways it's a pretty bleak thing just because, you know, you'd prefer to get out the other side of the era. So we'll turn off from that. But obviously we're thinking about everybody affected by that. We're praying for everybody affected by that. That. And that's, that's all we'll say about that shooting right now. I'm not going to say turning to more cheerful stuff. None of this stuff is cheerful. Less immediately tragic stuff. It may be stuff more to get mad about than, than to be specifically more sorrowful about.
- [03:40]
B
I don't know.
- [03:40]
A
You can be mad about a, mad about a mass shooting too. It's all so bad. All the news is so bad. We're sorry. We're sorry you all have to have to deal with it all the time. We don't really like dealing with it all the time. I guess it's nice that we're all sort of together to, to deal with a lot of bad news. But let's turn to some different bad stuff. Let's turn to first. I guess we'll get to the polling in a little bit here but let's talk about what we've all been talking about for a few days now. Cuz there's more new stuff in the President's settlement fund. This all first broke on Friday when ABC News was reporting or maybe, maybe actually Thursday, Thursday afternoon ABC News was reporting that this was coming that Donald Trump was going to drop his lawsuit against the IRS, his very silly $10 billion lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns a few years back by an outside contractor for the IRS who had access to them. Trump was gonna drop that lawsuit in exchange for his people at the treasury department and the IRS agreeing to set up this $1.776 billion, quote, unquote, anti weaponization fund to basically give out grievance payments to anybody who can plausibly claim they were targeted by lawfare or weaponization of government during the Biden administration, basically to a lot of Trump allies who got in legal trouble or even just sort of political trouble during the Biden years. That was reported. ABC reported it was coming. Even. I'm curious what you think about this bill, because even when it was reported by abc, it just seemed so shocking, so completely shameless and ridiculous. And obviously it's Trump we're talking about. You don't want to be surprised by the guy. But I did sort of wonder maybe, maybe there's like, internal disagreement about this. Maybe somebody's leaking this to ABC ahead of it being finalized in order to spark the kind of blowback that will make them reassess, make them take a step back. When it was first reported and we wrote about it in morning shots on Friday, did you think, no, this is, this is just what's going to happen, or were you maybe a little more Pollyanna ish like me, that, that. That maybe they would sort of step back away from this one?
- [05:45]
B
I thought it would happen because in the second term, and we can talk more about this, the degree to which Trump every shameless idea they have, they execute, apparently, no matter how much it would have been viewed as not just improper and appropriate, but illegal and really terrible to do a real violation of law and norms. They seem to do that in the second term. Actually, I was surprised that the general counsel of treasury resigned, and he seems to have resigned over this yesterday, which is nice. Now he hasn't said anything. So, again, we'll have this principle we see or practice we've seen in the Trump second term where decent people do leave. We've seen quite a lot of that in the Defense Department, for example. They also seem to feel weirdly constrained about saying anything about why they left. And this person is a political appointee at treasury, been confirmed by the Republican Senate and been there seven years, seven months, so far as we know, carrying out all kinds of other policies that are pretty dubious, honestly, at Treasury. But this was a bridge too far So I think you were right to think this is a bridge further than some of the very bad Britishes we've already crossed. But as you point out, and you should talk more about it in warning shots, this one, really an excellent piece. I mean, the degree to which this is a slush fund for Trump, it doesn't even have to go. You almost were too nice in describing it. Now. It doesn't have to go to anyone who's, we don't even know who it's, I mean, Trump can find people who aren't aggrieved and just to say they're aggrieved and give them the money. And there's no appeal, there's no guidance, there's no oversight by the courts. And then, of course, we'll see if Congress steps up to actually reassert its control over federal funds. But so far, it's Republicans may make that difficult. No Republican that I know of on the Hill has objected to this yet. So it's really, you're right to be appalled that it's a bridge further than the previous bridges. But maybe I was right to think that the whole point of the Trump second term is to keep going across the next bridge, the next bridge down the road to even further lawlessness, you know.
- [07:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. As luck would have it, my understanding, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, because Matt was, our producer, was talking about this a little bit, I think Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, is talking about some of this stuff in congressional testimony right now, and Matt was saying he has a bit of a clip of Senator Van Hollen grilling him a little bit over this. So, Matt, if you wanna play this, I mean, this is really just happening as we're talking about it, and then we'll get in a little bit more to some of the details of the settlement here.
- [08:00]
C
Chairman. Mr. Attorney General, this is an outrageous, unprecedented slush fund that you set up. Simple question. Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund?
- [08:15]
A
Well, as it makes plain. Anybody.
- [08:18]
C
Just let me know if they're eligible for the fund.
- [08:20]
A
As, as, as was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they're a victim.
- [08:28]
B
Weapons.
- [08:28]
C
Mr. Change, let me ask you this. Are there going to be rules that say that if you've assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible? Why not make that a rule?
- [08:41]
A
I expected that. Well, because I'm not one of the commissioners setting up the rules, I expect
- [08:46]
C
more of the members, aren't you, Mr. Attorney General?
- [08:48]
A
Pardon me?
- [08:49]
C
You're appointing four of the five members I am appointing. You can finally set up the rules. I would hope you would make a rule that anyone convicted of assaulting a police officer of violent crime is simply not eligible. They should not apply.
- [09:00]
A
Well, so what, what Van Hollen is getting at there, and it's a really good line of argument because it's totally true, this is what we have learned that's new since yesterday. So yesterday morning we got basically, it's official, this is really true, ABC's reporting was correct, there's going to be this fund. But last night got, I guess some of it was yesterday in a statement from the Attorney General. And then last night the actual terms of the settlement fund were released. And what was made extraordinarily clear over and over again is it's genuinely worse even than even than people had anticipated in terms of how astonishingly sealed off and unaccountable and non transparent all of the mechanisms involved are. So what Van Hollen is drilling down on right there, and this is part of the settlement agreement, is that these commissioners who Acting Attorney General Blanche is going to appoint and who can be fired by the way, at the President's sole discretion without cause at any time, at which point Blanche could appoint more. So they truly are just under the thumb of the president and his MOOCs. They are going to have complete carte blanche, no pun intended, I guess, to set all of the terms of the disbursement, all the rules, all the procedures, who's eligible, who's not, all that stuff. None of that is in the settlement. It's all 100% determined by the commissioners of this fund. And they don't have to tell anybody about it. The settlement fund says they may or they may not, at their sole discretion, sort of release those procedures and make them public even. Who is going to be applying, who is going to be getting money dispersed, all of these things they are applying directly to that Commission. The Commission deals with them according to the Commission's own procedures. And, and they don't have to make that public either. Again, this is part of, I don't know what we have. Let's just go through a couple of these screenshots that we have. So here's one thing. This is from the DOJ's enforcement memo. Once the funds are deposited into the designated account, which means this $1.776 billion fund, no longer part of the treasury, but in this fund, the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers or any other fraud or misuse of the funds. So that's handy. Let's move along. This is basically, let's skip the applying for money bit. That's a little bit less important. Onto the appeals thing. This settlement agreement is enforceable and challengeable solely by plaintiffs, defendants and the United States, which means specifically the two parties in this case, which are Trump in his personal capacity and Trump's own MOOCs at the Treasury Department and the IRS, and then by the United States government. So really it's Trump, Trump is the one who could challenge this, this arrangement. It's possible other people will find standing. But, but, but they are asserting the right that nobody has the right to challenge this but them. And then just to kind of put a finer point on that, because the claims process is voluntary, there shall be no appeal, arbitration or judicial review of claims offers or other determinations made by the anti weaponization fund. So again, just complete black box. And the thing I started to gesture at before is that the only person who needs any, any notification about disbursements made for any reason is the Attorney General. The fund has to tell the Attorney General confidentially who they've given money to and how much they've given. They have to send that to him quarterly. And again, it's confidential. He in theory, I guess could choose to release that. The President could choose to release that. But, but he's under no obligation in the terms of the settlement agreement to do so. Am I missing anything here, Bill? I mean it just seems like it's one outrage piled on top of another.
- [12:42]
B
Yeah, totally. I hadn't even focused on the sentence you read earlier about no appeals for fraud or anything like that. I think about this. This is disbursement of funds that the federal government has. It's this settlement fund that they have as an open ended fund to actually pay people. So when the US Government gets sued and has done something wrong, they took your land and didn't pay you for it or whatever, they defrauded you, some US Government agency mistreated you and defrauded, there's money there for the government to pay you, just like there would be in a corporation to pay you. That's what this is for. It's not for this kind of. But anyway, the fact that you can't sue for fraud or you can't be penalized for fraud apparently is unbelievable. I mean if you defraud Medicare, the government can go to court to both get its money back and to punish you. And that is true of every government program. If you lie in a government contract, if you defer the Defense Department, if you claim to be ex and you're not, if you claim to be a disabled veteran and you're not a disabled veteran and you get VA money, I mean, right. That is kind of part of running a government where the rule of law obtains and fraud is not permitted either by the government or against the government. In this case, an explicit, an explicit rejection of any such claim. So I suppose you could show up, lie, say you were a January 6th protester, say you went to jail. If they didn't do very good diligence on your criminal records, you got the money, nothing can be done about it. So, I mean, the degree, as you say, of unaccountability, the degree of arbitrariness is really astonishing. They, they don't, it's not even really for victims. I mean, leave aside whether it's appropriate type of fund, which is ridiculous, for victims of Biden's Justice Department, if they're real victims, they can sue in court like every other victim of the federal government. But they already could. But no, this is a special fund for them. But it's not even limited to them, Right? It can just be other people. Trump decides he likes. You know, every member of the proud boys just could be given money and no one could appeal, no one can challenge it. And as Senator Van Hollen pointed out, it doesn't matter if you've been convicted of a violent crime. So it's really worth the outrage that you heap upon it in warning shots. And it's worth saying that Congress can stop this. I mean, Congress can and does often restrict the expenditure of federal funds in all kinds of programs. And just one point on that. There's been a certain amount of disingenuous stuff while this isn't an appropriation. This is a standing fund. Well, Medicare isn't an appropriation. It's an entitlement, right? I mean, a million program, many programs are not annually approved, appropriated. Their rules are set up, and then the money goes out the door. And if it's more one year, it's more one year. That's why it's called entitlement. That's why they grow sort of unregulated by Congress. But they have rules, they have limitations. And indeed, Congress often imposes limitations. Very famous things, the Hyde Amendment. Certain funds, Medicaid funds can't be spent for on abortion. But I mean, there are many, many such things. Obviously Right. Perfectly legitimate for Congress to say we're happy the Justice Department has a settlement fund, has to be able to pay off what it's found to have done something wrong in court. But no monies in the settlement fund or any other monies in the federal FISC can go to these kinds of, to this purpose. And they could specify it pretty concretely, I guess. Trump would veto. I mean, I don't know if the Republican, I mean, the Democrats really need to make a huge ruckus about this and make Republicans, as much as they can, vote on it, make them vote for this $1.77 billion slush fund.
- [16:02]
A
It's a lot of money.
- [16:03]
B
I know.
- [16:05]
A
Billion dollars. All right, man. Yeah, I, I, this point you're bringing up is really good. And I want to highlight it because I think, like, the corruption, the corruption angle and the fact that it is going to allies in this unaccountable way, all of that is so staggering that obviously, you know, we're going to spend a lot of time and energy talking about that and condemning that. But even if, if, for the sake of argument, this were like a really actually noble cause, that, that, that this was all going to, there was some genuine grievance, some real thing, all the conflict of interest stuff, you could set all that aside. We should note how astonishing of a short circuiting and circumvention of the congressional power of the purse this would still be, even, even setting aside all the corruption and everything like this. And I talked to a guy, Matt Plackin, who's the former Attorney General of New Jersey. Yesterday, there were 93 Democrats who, who filed an amicus brief in this suit, basically pointing out how, how bad this is from a separation of power standpoint. But this is what he said to me yesterday. It is Congress who appropriates money, is the executive who spends it. Put aside all of the potential corruption with this case. If the President can just sue himself and then settle with himself and then spend huge amounts of money outside of that appropriations process, why would any president ever go to Congress for money ever again? And that is a great point. It's just, it's just obviously true. The settlement fund that's being set up here has so little to do, zero to do with the actual lawsuit that's being claimed or that, that, that was filed in the first place. Trump sued his own government over this tax return thing. He's the plaintiff in that case. Right. He's the one who was supposedly harmed. And then, because, and then he now drops this in order to set up this completely unrelated settlement fund to get, to give cash payments out to friends and allies. I mean, he could have asked Congress to appropriate money to, to, to, to go to these friends and allies in particular, if it was such a political priority for him. But, but he doesn't think he needs to do this because he has such tight control over his own Treasury Department, over his own irs, that he knows that, that these guys will be willing to play ball according to this bizarre, unprecedented, really corrupt mechanism. And what we are learning about that mechanism is again, it's yet another of these things that we learn under Trump. Certain parts of the government turn out under current law to just kind of run on the honor system, that you will never actually see a president go through this mechanism because the judge does not seem, at least right now, it does not appear as though this judge is going to be able to challenge this settlement. She does not believe she has the authority to do this because this settlement was never docketed, it was never filed in her court. Ordinarily, again, in an ordinary adversarial process where you have the government on one side and somebody suing the government on the other side and both of them actually sticking up for their relevant interests, this would never happen. You would have the settlement carry out, take place over a long period of time, get hashed out in court. A judge would need to approve it and okay it. But in this instance, it turns out maybe not so much was just another one of these loopholes that Trump has pried open just by being his normal shameless sort of rule, scoffing at unaccountable self.
- [19:14]
B
Yeah, it's even within a loophole, he just driven right through any normal barrier. You know, it's interesting, most of the settlement fund obviously is used for resolving, as you say, lawsuits where a judge has presided and there's been an adversarial process and so forth and a decision about how much and to whom and who's a part of who's a what, other plaintiffs. Maybe there's a class action in which case a whole class of people get money. There have been times that I knew I haven't looked at in a while, but the habitats of the federal government has decided to compensate a whole group of people who aren't necessarily litigants, I believe, in a court case, but who have been treated badly. There was Japanese reparations for those who were locked up During World War II, Japanese Americans put in the detention camps of World War II, and that I think Congress passed that kind of maybe two Decades ago. I was sort of interested at the time because a lot of conservatives were against it, but I thought it was kind of reasonable anyway. So I knew I haven't looked at this in a long time, but there was still a mechanism set up for who would get the money and how much. Right. And there was. You had to show, I believe, that you had, were descendant of, you know, had been locked up or had been a descendant of someone who had been treated unjustly in this way, and that there was a certain guidelines for how much people would get and, and, and so forth. And you couldn't, you know, fraudulently claim money, and the government couldn't arbitrarily give money to people who hadn't been victims of this. So there are times when it's not even the federal funds are expended, not as a result of a actual lawsuit. That's the majority of the cases, of course. But even there, there are guidelines and there's also transparency and there's a chance to go to court and say, wait, they said no to me and I should have gotten the money, or the opposite. You know, the government can go to court and say, this person made up, you know, things and shouldn't get the money. Right. So it's the, yeah, the degree of this is just arbitrary rule. I mean, this is just Trump has his money, Trump claims the money, this general counsel of treasury sees what's happening and resigns. And I think really thinking this is basically criminal. I mean, this is, you know, behavior going up to the president. But so far, at least, he's, he's going to try to do it, and we'll see if Congress really steps up on this or not. And even if Congress steps up, Trump, of course, could veto Congress. And even if Trump doesn't and said, I have no confidence that Trump would even follow the law if Congress says you can't do it, you know, I mean, it's like one of these, you know, good, good luck, Congress. Who's going to enforce this, exactly? The Justice Department? I don't think so. They're part of, they're part of the criminal scheme. So anyway, but this is, it's a good. I mean, it's not good. It's a very useful illustration of how far Trump is willing to go. And maybe we could talk about this now where I think you had originally thought we took it later in the program. I think it's such an important point, the degree to which Trump is just barreling through every norm and laws, for that matter, here in the second term. Also the degree to which he's indulging all of his private kind of grievances, whether it's about the 2020 election or his private wishes to have ballrooms and so forth. It is really astounding, isn't it? I mean, it's.