Trump’s Slush Fund Is Even Worse Than You Thought
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Summary
Donald Trump's $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" settlement fund has stunned legal experts—not just because it's corrupt, but because of how skillfully and transparently it is designed to protect the Trump Family and reward loyalists. On this week's Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick brings together two of the sharpest observers of Trump-era lawlessness to map exactly what this is and why it matters.
J.P. Cooney, a career federal prosecutor and former top deputy in Jack Smith's special counsel's office, explains how President Trump sued his own IRS as a private party, settled the case through attorneys who have also been his personal lawyers, and then secured an addendum—signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—immunizing Trump and his family from any IRS audit or tax-enforcement proceeding. Cooney calls it "practiced, skillful corruption".
As Investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein, host of The Law According to Trump, author of American Oligarchs, and a veteran of five Trump trials, points out, this settlement enshrines Trumpian language— such as "unlawful raid at Mar-a-Lago" and "Russia collusion hoax"—in official U.S. government documents. Bernstein says it’s vital to be clear about who stands to receive payouts: people convicted of seditious conspiracy, assaulting Capitol police officers, and other crimes they admitted to in open court.
Cooney and Bernstein agree this fund doesn't just reward insurrection—it incentivizes future violence, chills legitimate dissent, and systematically erases the historical record of Jan. 6.
Later, Slate executive editor Susan Matthews joins to preview the new season of Slow Burn, Becoming Justice Gorsuch—and explain why the most anonymous justice on the court is so pivotal to understanding the power and the politics of the highest court in the land.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court. |
| 0:09.3 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick. |
| 0:12.8 | Trump has engaged in actually practiced, skillful corruption and enlisted every arm of government to accomplish it. |
| 0:21.6 | Why should taxpayers be paying to settle a $10 billion lawsuit that was brought by the President of the United States? |
| 0:29.6 | We're not just writing a $1.8 billion check. |
| 0:32.6 | We're going to take a lot of people who are going to apply and say that they have been mistreated by their government. |
| 0:39.6 | We're going to handle those situations case by case. |
| 0:44.0 | Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time, okay? |
| 0:47.9 | This settlement is just a small measure of the justice that they're over. What it is saying to people is not only if you violently defend Trump's interests, will you face no legal consequences. |
| 0:58.0 | But if you violently defend Trump's interests, you will be rewarded. |
| 1:08.4 | There is zero doubt that Donald Trump's $1.8 billion, quote, anti-weaponization fund for victims of lawfare is a staggering act of corruption. |
| 1:21.3 | As one commentator put it this week, a third grader could tell you that. |
| 1:26.0 | But the Trump administration's newest |
| 1:28.3 | staggering act of corruption is more than just that. It's Watergate on steroids. It is theft |
| 1:34.3 | from the American people. It is designed to reward violence and insurrection, to incentivize |
| 1:40.0 | future violence and insurrection. And it's engineered to shield Donald Trump and his family |
| 1:45.7 | from not just accountability, but any possibility of scrutiny or inquiry that remained after |
| 1:52.6 | the Supreme Court's immunity decision. The challenge with this outrage is not explaining why |
| 1:58.2 | it's unlawful. Of course, it's unlawful. The challenge lies in mapping the many ways it's unlawful. Of course it's unlawful. The challenge lies in mapping the many |
| 2:03.2 | ways it's unlawful and why that matters. Because if the constant refrain of the first Trump |
| 2:08.6 | administration was, can he do that? The drumbeat of his second installment in the White House |
| 2:13.9 | has to be, what are we going to do about it? |
... |
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