The Credulity of Journalists

Glenn Thrush, NYT:

And this, as we were reporting and figuring out how this all came down, it seems that this huge thing that he has sort of blown up the Senate and created this enormous rift in his party was an expedient so that they could get out of having to actually pay Donald Trump money, which Blanche and folks at the White House actually believed would have been a bridge too far,” he added.

“So believe it or not, this fund, this weaponization fund, which everyone is calling a slush fund with no rules, no guidelines on who will distribute the money, and apparently no guardrails was actually considered to be the best of other alternatives. This was actually their best possible plan,” he revealed.

So:

—a slush fund with no rules, including no transparency or accountability. Who gets paid, how much they get paid, why they get paid: no one else is going to know. And you can’t verify whatever you’re told, because only the AG can ask for an audit. And under Trump, that’s never going to happen. And after Trump? What’s it going to take to track down the payees by then?

—to be given to applicants based on Trump’s perception of their “victimization” by Biden, when the arrests and charges started under Trump.

—a fund started because the DOJ wanted to access the Judgment Act to make the payments legal, which required litigation to trigger;

—which litigation they had to abandon when they went to court to get the $10 billion settlement approved so Trump could legally access the Judgment Act funds.

—when the judge threatened to dismiss the case on the grounds there weren’t two opposed parties involved, Trump took a new “settlement” option and dismissed the case himself. Which raises the question of whether this settlement legally triggers the Judgment Act, since the case was dismissed, and the problems raised by the first settlement still exist.

And this “was their best possible plan”? For what? Looting the Treasury? The IRS reviewed the claim and said it should be dismissed in court without settlement, in part because the statute of limitations had run. No proof of damages was ever offered, and the claimed damages (for either settlement) far exceeds statutory limitations. In short, the suit should have been challenged in court and likely would have been dismissed. But as the trial court noted, the two parties to that now defunct suit were not adversarial. And this “slush fund” is the result.

So this “was the best possible plan” for who? And how?

Are reporters from the NYT not allowed to ask these questions?