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The Parnas Perspective
Breaking: Democrats Launch Major Effort to Stop Trump’s Taxpayer Fund for his Allies
00:17:19
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A
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B
Wayfair Every style, every home we have breaking developments at this hour. The $1.7 $1.8 billion slush fund that Donald Trump wants to establish to pay off January six defendants, his allies, and more while it's being established. And the Department of Justice just made the announcement within the past hour, but just posted it to their official website within the past 10 minutes. And now that I have all the details, I want to tell you that this in a lot of ways represents potentially the largest kind of corrupt effort to take taxpayer funds for personal use that we've ever seen before. And I want to tell you exactly how the Justice Department has done it. At the same time, House Democrats have already filed what is called an amicus brief, a friend of the corporate in an effort to block this. I don't know that it'll survive legal scrutiny, but I don't know that it necessarily has to. And that is the big issue here. So I have all the latest Like Comment Share subscribe At the same time, I do have big news for you that I was telling you about on the AI Deepfake front that I'm going to have more in my substack below. But we just me and Ro Khanna just sent a letter to the White House demanding guidance and specific answers as to how to protect people like me from AI Deepfakes who literally take my image, take my likeness. This is the letter. It's small, but Essentially, what specific steps is the administration taking to prevent the AI generated impersonation of real people for the purpose of spreading false medical, financial, political, legal or consumer advice? I told you, we're working. I'm working with Congressman Ro Khanna on this. This is the first step. We're going to the White House. And if they don't respond, then we're going to take further action. So get ready. And if you can, subscribe to my substack link below to support this effort, because I'm going to need all the help I can get. So this afternoon we learned that there is a settlement in place. The Department of justice announced a 1.7 $1.8 billion $1.76776 billion. It's a settlement fund that they're creating as part of a, quote, settlement agreement in the lawsuit of President Donald J. Trump versus the Internal Revenue Service. It's called the Anti Weaponization Fund to provide a systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare. Okay? It's 1.776 billion. And it's intended to provide compensation to Donald Trump's allies, including January 6th defendants. This money is your money. It is taxpayer dollars that is going to be siphoned from the federal treasury and given in this fund to anyone who may have felt aggrieved. There will be a formal process by which commissioners. There are five commissioners on this fund, but they're all appointed or four of them are appointed by the Attorney general. And Donald Trump can fire them whenever he wants, with or without cause. Does not matter. So essentially, Trump will decide through those commissioners who gets the money and for what purpose the fund will receive than nearly $1.8 billion will come from the judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation following DOJ to settle and pay cases. The fund on a quarterly basis shall send a report outlining who has received relief and what the form of the relief was. The fund shall seize no later than December 1, 2028. So it's established for a period about 18 months. Here's where things get tricky for the Justice Department. They say that it's the legal precedent for such fund is from the Keep Siegel case where the Obama administration created $760 million fund to redress various claims alleging racism against the federal government. The Keep Siegel case, you may never have heard of it. Most people have been. It's a case where Native American farmers sued for years of discrimination, years of racism in favor of white farmers in the United States of America. The Obama Justice Department announced a massive settlement fund to ensure that Native American farmers who were grieved, discriminated against for many years, for decades, that they get paid for that discrimination, that they get redress. In this case is very different. Number one, this is not like keepsiegel because Trump himself sued. It's not Native American farmers suing or. Right. Obama didn't sue in the Keep Siegel case. Trump is suing in this case. That's number one. Big difference. Number two, this has nothing to do with racism. This has nothing to do with discrimination. None of that. None of that. But here's where things get even trickier. Disclosure is not required when prohibited by law or a court order. The Justice Department is making clear that those who receive money from this fund never have to disclose that they receive money from this fund. So the public will never know, unless people want to affirmatively disclose it, who gets money and how much they get. So if Donald Trump himself, he's prohibited. But if the Trump Organization, which had been sued by Letitia James for millions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, if it wants to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars from this fund, it could do so, and you will never know about it. Now, what's going to be happening in response? Well, already there is a motion for leave to file a brief as amicuri by 93 members of the Democratic House of Representatives. They say that it should be blocked. They, in a court filing, objected to the potential settlement, saying it creates a specter of corruption unparalleled in American history. They write, quote, never in the history of the United States has a sitting president sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads, let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Okay? But here's the problem. Here's the problem, and I'll tell you what it is. The problem is that the Department of Justice is establishing this fund in a kind of separate legal maneuver. It's not necessarily subject to court approval because it's not settled through the court. It's this separate settlement fund that it's establishing independent of the withdrawal, the ending of the Trump versus IRS case. And so there are real questions over whether or not the court even has jurisdiction to oversee whether or not the establishment of the fund is lawful. And so you may have a situation now where you have this $1.8 billion being given away to taxpayers, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Now, that doesn't mean Democrats won't try to stop it, and they may very well win. I haven't fully briefed all the legal filings and taken a look at everything, they may be right. It's going to be an uphill battle, but we'll see. And I asked Congressman Ami Berra about this this afternoon. Make sure to like, comment, share and subscribe. My conversation with Congressman Ami Berra right here. But before I get there, I do want to talk about one other thing and that's my personal privacy. We talked about the AI generation at the beginning. I'm also taking steps to ensure my information is wiped off the Internet. It's why I've partnered with Delete me for this post. Take a listen to this. All right, we got some big news right now. I recently received a threat to myself and my family. It was real, it was scary, but thankfully I was able to make sure it did not happen again. With a newborn in tow. Making sure that my family is protected is truly top of mind for me. And, and reporting on topics that I do often lends credence to threats, including the one I received recently to my inbox. It's why I'm continuing my partnership with Deleteme. I've worked with them for many months. Delete Me has helped protect my personal information, remove it from data brokers, websites, like third party sites where essentially my personal information, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, et cetera, would be on. They've helped wipe it and it's really helped protect me, protect my family. Because right now, with threats even greater, I truly know Delete Me has my back. And I want to make sure you can protect yourself too. It's easy. Go to the link below, use code Aaron and protect yourself and your loved ones this year. Now back to the news. Delete Me is great. I trust them. I use them. You should too. Here's my conversation with Congressman Ami Berra. Excited today to be joined by Congressman Ami Berra from California. Now, Congressman, I want to jump right in and get your reaction to the $1.8 billion tax payer funded settlement that the Department of Justice has announced with Donald Trump to create this fund to pay out to January Sixers or any ally of the President. What's your reaction?
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C
I mean, this seems like a shakedown of the federal government and just a lot of inside dealing. Right? It's Trump's Justice Department. Trump bringing the lawsuit, you know, and this was because of his lawsuit against the IRS, I believe. Yeah, it was $10 billion and they settled it for this. Again, this just seems like the shady inside dealing that the American public is sick and tired of.
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Is this something that Democrats can Conduct oversight into. If you guys take over in November?
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C
Absolutely. I think if we get the majority. One thing that I've suggested to our leadership is we should have a select subcommittee on government corruption, that we should actually set this up and again, look at all aspects of government, because this is the most corrupt administration that I've ever seen in my lifetime, perhaps ever. Just the double dealing, the self dealing. And you know, what, what they're doing, which is just out of the norms, we've got to expose that, and then we have to write the legislation that prevents that. And again, I would create a select subcommittee, perhaps under the Oversight or Judiciary Committee, but something that can really just do a deep dive and focus in on this.
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B
And I guess, what does that look like? I mean, because a lot of people are clamoring for accountability right now. Who are you targeting? Who would you go after? What? I mean, what do you see as the most corrupt parts of this administration thus far?
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C
I mean, what we just saw come out today, acts of corruption, but also some of the deals that they're cutting with foreign countries. You know, what was Eric Trump doing in China with, with the president last week? Were they cutting side deals and so forth? I just think we have to peel the onion back and look at all of this. You know, the fact that the president created his own cryptocurrency and, you know, his family made billions off of that. Again, I think there's so much that we have to look at that it does mandate a select committee.
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B
What do you say to folks who say, okay, you're going to create this committee and nothing's ever going to happen, they're just going to dodge subpoenas. Trump doesn't actually ever get held accountable for anything. The courts don't really care, and someone's just completely defeated about it.
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C
I mean, they're going to try to dodge subpoenas. His Justice Department is not going to enforce those penas. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do what's right. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have these hearings and expose this level of corruption. It also means that we should then be writing legislation. So, you know, it may not happen in the next Congress, but hopefully we have the White House in January 2029. We'll do the investigative work. Maybe it is that in 2029 is when you're bringing people before Congress, where you're enforcing those subpoenas.
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B
I do got to ask you, you're a member of Congress in California, your governor's race, to say the least, is a bit of a mess. What's your take on the current race right now for governor of California? Are you supporting anyone in particular?
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C
You know, the governor's race is wide open. I've endorsed the mayor of San Jose, Matt Mahan. He's relatively new on the political scene. He's done some pretty wonderful work in San Jose in terms of revitalizing their downtown building housing, addressing the homeless challenge and crisis. And we know AI is coming at us. We can't run away from it, but we have to understand it, we have to shape it, we have to do it in a way that doesn't negatively impact the public. So he's taken on a lot of those issues. And now that said, he's a relatively unknown individual. He's probably polling around 10%, but nobody's polling above 20%. And you know, election day is roughly two weeks away, so, you know, it's still wide open. There is that small possibility two Republicans potentially could get through as well.
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B
Well, yeah. Are you worried about that at all? Because I've heard some folks who are still. Even though with Swallow dropping out and Betty dropping out, there is still some concern that you may have this top two lockout situation. Are you concerned at all?
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C
You know, it's possible. Javier Becerra's continued to stake around 20%, Tom Stiers in that 15%, 17% range. So right now I think we're okay again. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of polling that comes out of the next few weeks and we'll see how that plays. I think we're safe right now, though.
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B
Now you talk about the election upcoming. I do want to touch on the election in November. You're running for reelection right now in your district. You. It was a bit of a musical chairs for California Democrats. Just representatives anyway, anywhere across the state. What does your reelection effort look like right now after the redistricting effort?
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C
Yeah, so we took my nice D 14 D 15 district and split it into 2 D 6 districts. I went ahead and chose a district that's the eastern part of Sacramento county that extends all the way up to Lake Tahoe. I think that district we can take off the table. You know, Kevin Kiley chose not to run against me and he chose to run in the other half of my former district. That is going to be a competitive race, that California 6 seat. We've got a crowded primary, a number of good Democratic candidates. One of them should emerge against Kevin Kiley. But Kevin Kiley is a tough competitor. So, you know Again, assuming my district is safe, I'll focus my energy on helping win California 6th District, helping Adam Gray get reelected. David Valladay is vulnerable. Darrell Isseat is one that we should pick up. So there'll be a number of races. The ISIS seat is one we're paying close attention to, CA 48, because that is one where you have multiple Democrats running and it is possible two Republicans could get through.
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B
I do want to ask you what, what happens when Democrats take over in November? What are your priorities on day one?
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C
Yeah. So I think again, we talked a little bit about the investigations exposing the cor. I also think, you know, whatever our first bills are, they've got to address the issue of the day, affordability. You know, that is issue number 1, 2, 3. And that's why Trump's numbers are so underwater. He's tone deaf here. Listen to his comments from last week where he says he doesn't even think about the economic pain Americans are feeling. So I think we've got to lay out an agenda that says, here's what we would do to help make your life more affordable. That means, you know, food benefits. That means lowering the cost of education. That means addressing gas prices by ending this war. And around. I hope it's over long before the November election. But if it's still there and we're still mired in it, we've got to figure out how to make that filling up your gas tank affordable. It also means we've got to build more housing. You know, I hear that whenever I'm out with my constituents, but that's an issue across much of this country. If we want to build more housing, let's build more housing. It does mean we've got to take on some of the regulatory issues, make it easier to build, make it more affordable for those young families to get into housing and build that American dream.
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B
Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time this afternoon.
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C
Thank you.
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A
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