Trump's $1.776 billion settlement fund is ripe for abuse | Opinion

On May 18, the Justice Department announced the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claim the federal government was weaponized against them.

The fund was created alongside President Donald Trump dropping his own lawsuit against the IRS, in which he sought as much as $10 billion after a contractor leaked his tax returns in 2019.

Trump’s settlement with the IRS raises a host of concerns, most notably that the people overseeing the fund have every incentive to act in the president’s political interest.

Trump's interests cannot be separated from this fund

Trump claims he had nothing to do with the creation of the fund, but it emerged directly from the settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS. The fund will be administered by a five-person panel appointed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose members can ultimately be removed by Trump himself.

This is a fund with no congressional oversight resolving grievances outside the normal judicial process. Everyone involved in its creation ultimately works for Trump, either in his capacity as president or as a private citizen. Despite the Justice Department’s claims otherwise, it is difficult to imagine this becoming anything other than a partisan mess.

Even if Trump or members of his family never directly receive money from the fund, it is impossible to separate his interests from the arrangement. The money could potentially be used to compensate Jan. 6, 2021, U.S Capitol rioters or others who committed crimes in ways that politically benefited Trump. A system that financially rewards people who broke the law on behalf of a president is clearly problematic.

More troubling still, the fund expires in December 2028, just weeks before the next president takes office. Donald Trump will be the only president with authority over it.

Trump administration engages in the very behavior this fund claims to address

The greatest irony in all of this is that Trump has shown more willingness than most presidents to use government power against his political opponents.

Trump’s Justice Department has targeted several of the president’s adversaries on questionable grounds. In the cases of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the administration has openly pursued investigations tied as much to political grievance as public accountability.

In other cases, Trump has used the threat of government action to pressure institutions into policy outcomes favorable to him politically. His threats against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell were widely seen as an attempt to pressure the Fed into decisions that would benefit Trump economically and politically.

Naturally, the Trump administration would have little interest in allowing people targeted under Trump-era prosecutions to later seek compensation from this fund. The program’s expiration date conveniently prevents that possibility by ending before another administration takes office.

If a Democratic administration created a similar arrangement, Republicans would be outraged. In fact, Republicans were rightly furious when the Obama administration used comparable settlement funds in ways critics argued benefited political allies. And if a Democratic president created a fund that could potentially compensate figures like James Comey or Jimmy Kimmel, conservatives would rightly denounce it as blatant political patronage.

Trump has shown little hesitation about rewarding allies and targeting opponents, the very behavior this fund supposedly exists to remedy. In reality, this looks less like a neutral effort to address government abuse than another partisan mechanism for rewarding allies and punishing enemies.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.