Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Four Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation aimed at ending what they described as President Donald Trump's 'plunder' of US taxpayers.
The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act—cosponsored by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Jamie Raskin and Dave Min —was crafted in response to Trump's effort to get the federal Internal Revenue Service to hand him a $10 billion settlement for the 2020 leak of his tax records and his demand that the US Department of Justice pay him $230 million over its past criminal investigations of him.
Among other things, the bill would bar both the president and the vice president, as well as their immediate family members, from collecting settlement payments from the federal government while in office.
The proposed legislation would also prohibit both the president and the vice president from filing administrative claims for damages while in office, and would only allow presidents and vice presidents to 'collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public.'
The bill allows former presidents and vice presidents to collect damages from the federal government, but only if the agency being sued 'appoints career expert staff to lead the agency’s review or adjudication of any administrative claim brought by the former president/VP, and no official appointed by any president/VP is involved in handling the claim.'
Additionally, any settlement made to a former president or vice president must be made public within seven days.
Warren said that the legislation was necessary to stop Trump from 'trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores.'
Raskin accused Trump of exploiting the power of his office to 'loot billions of dollars from American taxpayers,' an operation that he described as the 'ongoing scandal of this ruthlessly corrupt administration.''
The ‘Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act’ will prevent the president from pursuing the emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a ‘plaintiff’ on bogus grounds,' Raskin added, 'and then settling the suit as ‘defendant’ for big bucks, a collusive settlement scam they recently executed with the disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who waltzed off with more than a million dollars for a bogus claim already dismissed by a federal court.'
Flynn settled with the DOJ last month in a case in which he accused the government of 'improperly and politically' targeting him, after he was charged with making false statements to the FBI in 2017.
The Democrats' bill has earned the endorsements of government watchdogs Democracy Defenders Action, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , and the Project on Government Oversight .
Debra Perlin, vice president of policy at CREW, praised the bill for establishing 'common sense guardrails to protect against corrupt payouts to the president and the vice president during their terms in office and after they depart.''
Since returning to office, Donald Trump keeps finding troubling new ways to enrich himself at the taxpayers' expense,' Perlin noted. 'The president’s lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion is emblematic of a pattern of self-dealing and corruption that appears pervasive in his administration.'
Jamie-Raskin Elizabeth-Warren Chuck-Schumer Citizens-For-Responsibility-And Donald-Trump
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