REMEMBER THE HYPOCRITES

 

LET'S NOT FORGET EPSTEIN

 

SCUM AND SLUSH

 

CORRUPTOR IN CHIEF

 

SCUMBAG'S SLUSH FUND

 

NEVER BEFORE - There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This

 

There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This

May 20, 2026

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.

Mr. Trump’s project has not yet succeeded, at least not fully. Many Americans — in the judicial system, in Congress, in state governments and elsewhere — continue to stand up for democracy and oppose his autocratic ambitions. By now, though, nobody should have illusions about what he is attempting to do.

The fund’s existence is a story of political self-dealing. It is nominally the product of a flimsy personal lawsuit that Mr. Trump filed this year against the Internal Revenue Service, which he oversees, over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. That lawsuit led to an absurd negotiation, in which the lawyers on one side worked for Mr. Trump the citizen and those on the other side worked for Mr. Trump the president.

Adding to absurdity, the government lawyers reported to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, who previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A federal judge in Miami helping to oversee the case, Kathleen Williams, pointed out that the two sides were not adversaries, which called into question the process. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the situation shortly after filing the suit by saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”

Yet the talks proceeded because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department was in charge. Unsurprisingly, they led to a deal that was extremely favorable to him.

In exchange for the president’s dropping the suit against the I.R.S., both he and his supporters will receive government handouts. For Mr. Trump, the handout comes in the form of permission to have cheated on his taxes. The government has granted him and his family immunity from ongoing audits of his tax payments. He has a long history of using questionable accounting maneuvers, and the audits could have cost him more than $100 million, experts have said. Now they will cost him nothing.

For his supporters, the handouts will come from the slush fund. The Justice Department will tap a permanent stream of revenue that Congress created in 1956, known as the Judgment Fund, to settle lawsuits against the federal government. As Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official, noted, the new fund appears to be both legal and at odds with Congress’s intent. “It’s horrible policy,” Mr. Figley told The Times.

The department has allocated $1.8 billion for what it calls, in an Orwellian flourish, an Anti-Weaponization Fund and invited applications from people who have been targeted for “political, personal or ideological reasons.” Mr. Blanche — who holds his position as acting attorney general largely because of his willingness to use federal power in service of Mr. Trump’s personal whims — will appoint a five-member board, with congressional leaders given input on one of the five. Mr. Trump can fire any of the members at any time.

To understand who is likely to receive payments, look at who has previously received settlements from the Justice Department. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, received $1.25 million, even though he pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, and whom federal agents shot as she and others approached the House floor, received nearly $5 million, even though investigators cleared the shooters of wrongdoing. The Trump administration is paying off people who committed violence and crimes, as long as they are Trump allies.

The fund’s timeline is the giveaway of how Mr. Trump plans to use it. The Justice Department said the fund would stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before the president is to leave office, ensuring the money is distributed while he still holds the power to fire anyone who objects. The window is precisely the window of Mr. Trump’s authority.

Even some of Mr. Trump’s usual defenders are unhappy. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, meekly said that he was “not a big fan” of the fund. Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, resigned within hours of the announcement, seven months after the Senate had confirmed him.

Providing payoffs is only part of the point. Another, according to Mr. Blanche, is “ensuring this never happens again.” What, exactly, is “this”? The evenhanded enforcement of the law.

The Trump administration has already fired federal agents who did their duties by investigating the president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has issued blanket clemency to more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom may soon receive payments. His Justice Department secured an indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on dubious charges as retribution for his role in the investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia ties. The fund continues the effort to turn law enforcement into a tool of raw political power.

The fund also encourages future lawlessness on Mr. Trump’s behalf. It sends the message that he will use his power not only to shield people who break the law from accountability but also to shower benefits on them. Just as punishment is a deterrent, rewards are an incentive.

After President Richard Nixon’s abuses in the Watergate scandal, Congress and the executive branch built rules and traditions to ensure that federal agencies, especially the Justice Department, operated in the public interest, rather than that of the president. Mr. Trump has tried to break this system. Once he is gone, it will need to be rebuilt, and better than before. He has exposed and exploited its flaws and gaps. Unless they are filled, Mr. Trump’s corruption and perversion of justice risk becoming the norm.

In the meantime, Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.

Trump’s Government Moves to Spare an Unhappy Taxpayer Named Trump

 

Trump’s Government Moves to Spare an Unhappy Taxpayer Named Trump

No president has ever used the federal government to advance his own personal interests and those of his family and allies as expansively and openly as Mr. Trump has.

President Trump seems even less inhibited by the rules, written or unwritten, that governed his predecessors. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

 

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is covering his sixth administration and has written multiple books on the modern presidency.

May 20, 2026

 

It is hard to imagine that any previous president would have thought he could engage in such an audacious act of self-dealing.

Sue the government he runs, then settle the lawsuit with himself by barring the Internal Revenue Service from auditing his past returns. And as part of that deal, hand over $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to his allies.

President Trump has used the federal government to advance his own personal interests and those of his family and allies more expansively and openly than any past occupant of the White House. Any review of history would suggest that it is not even close.

But as Mr. Trump, the only convicted felon ever elected president, heads deeper into his second term, he seems even less inhibited by the rules, written or unwritten, that governed his predecessors. While deeply unpopular with the general public, he has demonstrated as recently as this week that he remains the undisputed master of his own party, and therefore appears to feel that he can do as he likes without fear of Congress standing in his way.

His self-granted writ of immunity from the I.R.S. amounts to a get-out-of-audits-free card, essentially the equivalent of pardoning himself for any past offenses and forgiving any tax debt or penalties. While the status of any now-short-circuited audits is not publicly known, his action could theoretically save him from paying $100 million or more, based on past estimates of what his liability might have been under an unfavorable I.R.S. decision.

The I.R.S. audit exemption for himself, along with the taxpayer payout to his supporters — potentially including those who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn an election that Mr. Trump lost — stand out in their brazenness, yet not in what they say about his underlying approach to governance in his sixth year in office.

Mr. Trump has so blurred the lines between his financial interests and his public office that it is hard to define where the lines lie anymore, or if they still exist. He, his family and his friends have made a fortune in the 16 months since he returned to power in ways that once would have been seen as conflicts of interest and possibly generated investigations.

“Presidents have had corrupt, even criminal, family members,” said Barbara A. Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, citing, among others, Hunter Biden. “But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Trump family in the level of graft achieved.”

She added: “They have won the presidency twice, emasculated Congress, created a supportive high court, and reshaped the law and institutions to absolve them of any wrongdoing, while making billions of ill-gotten dollars.”

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, rejected the assertion.

“This is the same tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family and his administration for a decade,” she said. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”

While generally not covered by conflict of interest laws that apply to other government officials, presidents especially in the post-Watergate era have followed certain practices and abided by self-imposed limits to assure the public and feared a political price, at the least, if they did not. But Mr. Trump, already shielded from further criminal prosecution for acts deemed to be official under a new presidential immunity doctrine devised by the Supreme Court, has dispensed with such customs.

Just last week, a disclosure form indicated that Mr. Trump’s investment portfolio executed more than 3,600 trades in the first three months of this year alone, many involving companies that he has favored with access or policies. His portfolio bought stock in companies run by 15 of the 17 chief executives he brought with him to China last week. The timing of some purchases has raised questions about whether they were related to statements he made or to policies he embraced.

The Trump Organization, his family-owned business, said that the trades were made by outside brokerage firms, and that he, his family and his firm did not have any role in deciding what stocks to buy or sell. But unlike other modern presidents, Mr. Trump has not put his investments in a genuine blind trust, since, as the disclosure form made clear, it is no secret to him what companies he has shares in as he goes about making policy decisions.

His family has profited enormously off his new cryptocurrency business at the same time the president has rolled back regulation of the industry. Mr. Trump pardoned the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which was involved in helping the Trump family build its crypto start-up. Jeff Bezos, whose businesses receive federal contracts and depend on U.S. Postal Service rates, approved paying an estimated $28 million to Melania Trump, the first lady, for a self-promotional film streamed on Amazon.

Mr. Trump’s sons and son-in-law are involved in multibillion-dollar business ventures in the Gulf Arab states at the same time the president is making those nations favorites of his foreign policy. An investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates made a $500 million investment in the Trump crypto firm just days before his inauguration. The Trump administration later approved the export of advanced chips to the U.A.E. Altogether, Bloomberg has estimated that the family’s crypto investments have increased its net worth by more than $1 billion, at least on paper.

Image

The Trump family during the State of the Union address in February.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

Polls show that most of the public has concluded that Mr. Trump is leveraging the presidency for his own benefit. A poll by YouGov in March found that 54 percent of Americans believed the term “corrupt” applied “a lot” to the president, up from 46 percent a year earlier.

Democrats lashed out after the announcement of the $1.8 billion fund for Mr. Trump’s allies and the I.R.S. immunity. “A stunning act of corruption,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. “A scam,” wrote Representatives Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Jamie Raskin of Maryland. “This one is just eye-popping unbelievable,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Even some Republicans indicated unease with the arrangement. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said he was “not a big fan” of the taxpayer fund for Mr. Trump’s supporters. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania went so far as to say that “we’re going to try to kill it.”

But the Republican congressional majorities, which eagerly pursued corruption allegations against President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family, have until now shown little interest in scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s blending of personal and public interests. And Mr. Trump demonstrated once again on Tuesday with the defeat of Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky in a Republican primary that he still wields unrivaled power to punish those who cross him.

Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Trump defended his lawsuit against the I.R.S. over a contractor illegally providing his tax forms to reporters. The contractor has since been convicted by the Biden Justice Department and sentenced to prison, but Mr. Trump argued the agency itself should still be held responsible.

He nonetheless acted as if he had nothing to do with the eventual deal negotiated by lawyers who work for him, including the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was his personal defense attorney in criminal cases before the 2024 election.

“I guess they made a settlement of some kind,” Mr. Trump said. “I wasn’t involved in the settlement. I could have been involved. But I didn’t choose to be.” He did not explain why the release of his tax forms, even if the government were to be held liable, should preclude him from being held responsible if he underpaid his taxes.

As for the $1.8 billion fund, it is to go to those people who were supposedly mistreated by the Justice Department under Mr. Biden, which could include the Jan. 6 attackers, who were already pardoned by Mr. Trump. “People were destroyed,” he said. “They went to jail. Their families were ruined. They committed suicide.” He made no mention of the police officers who were assaulted or later died.

Mr. Trump is an unabashed tax avoider — “that makes me smart,” he famously said in 2016 — and his tactics have repeatedly drawn scrutiny. The Trump Organization, wholly owned by his family, was convicted in criminal court in 2022 of 17 counts of tax fraud, a scheme to defraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records for doling out off-the-books perks to some of its top executives. The company was given the maximum fine of $1.6 million. His chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to 15 counts and spent several months in jail.

For years, Mr. Trump fought to keep his tax returns hidden from the public, unlike every other modern president who voluntarily released them. Tax documents obtained by The Times in 2020 showed that he paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, when he originally ran for president on the basis of being a successful billionaire businessman, and only $750 in 2017, his first year in office.

In 10 of the previous 15 years, Mr. Trump paid no income taxes to the federal government whatsoever, by reporting large losses. A yearslong audit battle with the I.R.S. could have cost him $100 million absent this week’s arrangement, according to a Times analysis of his returns in 2020, a sum that could be significantly higher with six more years of interest.

Other presidents have traditionally done whatever they could to avoid looking like they were skimping on taxes, trading the markets, making money off policy decisions or using taxpayer funds to reward political allies. While many modern presidents have cashed in after leaving office, none have made the kind of money that Mr. Trump and his family have during their time in the White House.

Even the most notorious presidential financial scandals in history — Credit Mobilier during Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, Teapot Dome during Warren G. Harding’s presidency and Watergate during Richard M. Nixon’s tenure — did not come close to the money swirling around the Trump family during his second term.

“Not only do the three most infamous previous presidency financial-political scandals seem minor compared to Trump’s,” said Ms. Perry, the presidential scholar, “but none of the three presidents — Grant, Harding, Nixon — padded their own bank accounts.” People around Grant and Harding traded public policy for money, but there was no evidence that the presidents themselves profited. And the money raised by Nixon’s team went to his campaign dirty tricks slush fund and hush money for the Watergate burglars, rather into the president’s pocket.

As of Wednesday, Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Trump’s net worth at $6.1 billion, up from $5.1 billion last year and $2.3 billion in 2024.

Mr. Trump has insisted that he does not make policy decisions based on his own interests, and has accused those who have investigated him and his allies over the years of political persecution. But as he grows more settled in office, he appears less concerned about the way his actions look. He told The Times in January that he saw no benefit in following the presidential traditions of blind trusts, divestment of assets or avoiding business deals.

“I prohibited them from doing business in my first term,” he said of his family, “and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them.” Critics would argue that he in fact did not fully distance himself from business in his first term. But he noted that it did not make a difference: “I found out that nobody cared, I’m allowed to.”

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He is covering his sixth presidency and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework.

CBS Cancels Itself, Not Just Colbert

 

CBS Cancels Itself, Not Just Colbert

May 16, 2026

By Bill Carter

Mr. Carter is the author of “The Late Shift” and “The War for Late Night” and is editor at large for LateNighter.com

From the start of his career as a late-night television star on CBS, Stephen Colbert shattered the long-established broadcast network mold for who and what make a late-night host.

His previous experience, “The Colbert Report” (pronounced as though on TV Française) on Comedy Central, was a never-ending sketch, which had Mr. Colbert playing a caricature of a self-obsessed, blowhard conservative commentator.

He even conducted interviews on the show as the character, compelling him to tell his guests to be prepared for “a jerk.”

Before CBS, Mr. Colbert had almost never appeared as himself on television, nor most anywhere else. For years he gave interviews about the show completely in character, a guy who could not have been more opposite to the real Mr. Colbert in personality or political views.

Everyone had to be in on the fake news joke. It was a masterly, one-of-a-kind performance, one of the sharpest, most astute political satires ever produced for a mainstream audience — and a hit. It lasted for nine years. His recruitment by CBS to succeed the legendary David Letterman as host of “The Late Show” in 2014 made complete sense to me; he was a major comic star and he wanted the job. At the time, I was convinced it was a perfect match, and one sure to be easier than what Mr. Colbert had just pulled off. All he had to do this time was be the real Stephen Colbert.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the foundation of Mr. Colbert’s success was something new to late night: hard-core, point-of-view political comedy. He had developed it while contributing to “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. A broadcast network, steeped in the traditional “both sides” style of Johnny Carson, was going to expect him to drop that as well as the character.

CBS did; Mr. Colbert tried. It didn’t work.

His outspoken, pointedly satirical voice was muted in his early “Late Show” performances. He looked a bit lost, as though in trying to be the real Stephen Colbert whom CBS anticipated, he was actually becoming another character — and not a terribly funny one.

At risk of losing the gig, Mr. Colbert agreed to CBS’s push for a new executive producer, Chris Licht, with only TV news credits: “Morning Joe” and “CBS This Morning.”

Mr. Colbert later praised Mr. Licht and conceded he had been crucial in transforming the show into “what we really want to do,” which was build the comedy around the news of the day (even if Mr. Colbert had given up pretending to be a fake news anchor).

Mr. Licht’s arrival in 2016 coincided with the political rise of Donald Trump — and a grudge match made in media heaven was born.

Mr. Colbert started finishing first in late-night about a year later and stayed in the position for most of the time since.

Mr. Colbert is leaving the Ed Sullivan Theater this Thursday, after around 1,800 shows. CBS has said, definitely and defensively, that this is purely a business decision. Nobody really believes that, but even the No. 1 late-night show is not the moneymaker it once was. It’s expensive to produce. The broadcast ratings are not what they used to be. Those viewers who are left are disproportionately older, and of less interest to advertisers.

The network says it decided to end “The Late Show” because it was losing at least $40 million a year. Sounds credible, doesn’t it? Maybe not. Many insiders — including Mr. Colbert’s friend and direct competitor, Jimmy Kimmel — have noted that CBS’s calculation left out some key factors. It did not include the effect of Mr. Colbert’s star presence on the fees CBS is able to command from local affiliate stations. It shrugged off the value the network has gained from sending stars of its series onto the show for promotion. It ignored Mr. Colbert’s role in bringing viewers to those affiliates’ 11 p.m. news shows, in anticipation of the new “Late Show” episode that would air right after.

Mr. Colbert says the network never raised its financial concerns, and did not push for any of the ways such a show could cut costs. (When NBC saw declining revenues from its own late-night offerings, it eliminated the band on Seth Meyers’s show and cut Jimmy Fallon’s back to four days a week.) In fact, Mr. Colbert said CBS was “feverish” to lock him into a new contract only three years ago.

Mr. Colbert, as gentlemanly a star as there is on television, has thrown no on-air tantrums. He’s mostly left the open disparagement of the bosses to his predecessor, David Letterman.

But it’s no secret what transpired in between that eager pitch to extend his run and that sudden closing notice: CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was on the verge of a merger. President Trump, who had been wounded by Mr. Colbert’s political satire, and who on many occasions had publicly called for him to be canceled (or “put to sleep” in one memorable social media message), had returned to office and was in a position to interfere with any deal.

Paramount had already taken steps widely seen as currying favor with the administration, most notably when it signed off on a $16 million payment to settle a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” even though legal experts said Mr. Trump had very little chance of prevailing in court.

In a monologue, Mr. Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe.” He got word he’d been canceled just days later. A week or so after that, the deal was approved.

However CBS attempts to characterize the Colbert decision from now on, that’s what people will remember.

Having a late-night star on the air most weeknights has been a powerful statement, affirming that the broadcasters were still in the game, still offering original programming taped before a live audience that viewers showed up for, year round. Successful hosts became their networks’ signature stars.

In forcing Mr. Colbert out and shutting down a 33-year late-night franchise — while selling that post-local-news hour of airtime to a syndicated show instead of replacing him with an original program of the network’s own creation — CBS is assenting to its own diminishment.

The biggest loss is to core American values, such as the right to speak freely, even in brutally mocking terms, about those in power. Then there is the opportunity, shared by everyone, to find and be entertained by voices like that on a free national platform, or to turn them off and watch something else.