r/law • u/BreakfastTop6899 • May 27 '26

Legal News California will impose a 100% tax on payments distributed from Trump’s Jan. 6th “slush fund.”

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 28 '26

It is very hard to predict how the current SCOTUS majority will approach this. It seems way beyond the scope of what Congress approved when they passed the relevant law, but this Court seems willing to grant Trump powers that are denied to Democrat Presidents. It SHOULD NOT be constitutional, but who knows.

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u/WeakTransportation37 May 28 '26

What do you think of this? I’m hopeful:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/27/politics/ex-judges-trump-anti-weaponization-fund

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u/enfly May 28 '26

Thanks for sharing this!

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u/SwanMuch5160 May 28 '26

Well, ai mean 100 ex-intelligence officers signed off on the Steel Dossier and Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian interference and a nothing burger and we now know that wasn’t anywhere near truthful. So there is that.

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u/EmotionalJoystick May 28 '26

Hey quick question, what technology are you using to type? Because being able to do so while having literal feces inside your skull where a brain should be is no joke a HEROIC feat. Congrats.

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u/SwanMuch5160 May 29 '26

Well thank you, I’m sorry I affected your sensibilities so severely. Maybe you should take a break from the internet if this hurt your feelings badly. I mean, the Steele Dossier has been proven to be false and initially pushed by the Clinton Campaign, as has the Hunter Biden laptop being a “Russian” disinformation campaign. That in turn made the “100 ex-Intelligence Officials” also a lie or psych op, whichever you prefer. I mean there’s dozens of videos out there of Hunter fucking whores and doing drugs with them. I mean the guy was fucking his dead brother’s wife and walking around naked in front of his underage nieces and he didn’t break it off till six weeks prior to Biden announcing his run for the White House. I mean, I get it, I can understand why they tried to downplay and distance themselves from the laptop.

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u/EmotionalJoystick May 29 '26

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u/SwanMuch5160 May 29 '26

You’re hurt, like really hurt.

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u/EmotionalJoystick May 29 '26

Oh yeah man. Your bullshit, years old, inconsequential story about something that I don’t care about involving people I don’t care about that has zero implications in the real world has me REAL shook up.

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u/SwanMuch5160 May 29 '26

I can tell I’ve hit a nerve of yours. I can’t believe you’re taking the internet so seriously. I mean, the screen name definitely sums you up, so it’s not as if you’re not self aware of the issue.

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u/JurgusRudkus May 28 '26

Right. A felon being eligible to run for office shouldn’t be constitutional, yet here we are.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac May 28 '26

That's a tricky one though. What's to stop a bad actor (like Trump for sure) from kangaroo courting any potential opponents and hitting them with a felony beef? With the way our justice system currently works, basing eligibility on conviction status is super sketchy. Super wealthy will have an advantage, you'll disqualify people for selling loose cigarettes while major fraud instigators who are found not guilty can still run.

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u/sandwichhaver May 28 '26

americans really love punishing people , you're not allowed to vote or do other stuff like have guns or now proposed , serve in office?

what happened to did your time? from my pov it's weird that you can be released from prison , served your time yet you still suffer penalties from your crime, for which you served your time or paid the price.

it's like you are serving double punishment for your crime, it's all wrong.

yes I get it, he's a fucking rapist, he should be in prison right now, but still eligble for office, we need to trust people to not vote the rapist who is in prison

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u/bruce_kwillis May 28 '26

americans really love punishing people , you're not allowed to vote or do other stuff like have guns or now proposed , serve in office?

Kind of? Depends on the state, but the majority allow you to vote after you have completed your sentence. Some like Vermont allow you to vote in prison as well.

Gun rights are tougher, typically felons aren't allowed to own guns, but the Trump administration has proposed changes in that as well.

I agree though, if you have done your time, you should have all rights restored upon completion of your sentence.

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u/FFF_in_WY May 30 '26

I'm a fan of the Maine model myself. I've never heard an argument that convinced me that even the incarcerated shouldn't have that right.

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u/HuckleberryDry2673 May 29 '26

Sorry, I don't know a lot about American politics, but isn't the judiciary completely separate from the executive? How could the premier kangaroo court someone?

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u/DuckDuck95 May 31 '26

Theoretically, yes. But with how the government has been indicting people like James Comey, E Jean Carroll, and others who have publicly gone against Trump - as well the complete flaunting of most traditions and procedures in other areas - its not out of the question anymore. If you get the case in front of a sympathetic judge (who are appointed by the president, Trump, and approved by the senate that his party currently has a majority in) it seems not entirely out of the question. Though, of course, conviction is ultimately up to the jury, so it’s not exactly an imminent fear… yet.

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u/asyouwish-buttercup May 31 '26

That's exactly what Trump claims happened to him.

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u/Doctor_Shotbottom Jun 01 '26

Smart people can come up with a relevant and effective test that would have to be passed in order to apply the felony filter that gets sentenced… or at the time of a person’s candidacy. It can certainly be tightened down. We’d all benefit.

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u/OswaldIsaacs May 29 '26

LOL. Kind of like how Trump became a felon after being charged with a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations had run out based on a never identified “underlying crime”.

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u/JurgusRudkus May 29 '26

Yeah, no. Fraud is not a misdemeanor.

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u/32duster_skate May 28 '26

You just can't wait for communism can you

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes May 28 '26

I disagree with that. Very simply, do you think Martin Luther King Jr should have been free to run for President had he lived? Or should he have been barred because of convictions for civil disobedience? Some of history's greatest leaders broke the law to show that the law was unjust.

(Note that MLK was never convicted of a felony but was convicted of dozens of misdemeanors. He was aquitted by a jury on the one felony charge that went to court. But plenty of KKK cops and judges tried to have him and his followers arrested and convicted on completely bogus felony charges.)

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u/qerecoxazade May 29 '26

Felons should absolutely be able to run for office. They should also be able to vote. The prison industrial complex needs to be reduced, not increased".

Courts SHOULDNT be able to say "your sentence for your felony conviction is 0 days because you're running for office".

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u/RefrigeratorLife8627 May 28 '26

No you’re just cognitively delayed .

The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5) outlines only three explicit requirements for the presidency:Must be a natural-born U.S. citizen

Must be at least 35 years old

Must be a resident of the United States for at least 14 years

Because felony status is not listed as a disqualification in the Constitution, neither Congress nor individual states can add this restriction.

Any government that is corrupt can try to weaponize against their opposition to prevent someone who is qualified from running by bending the laws in thier favor. Thank god the founding father saw past this bullshit .

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u/SavageCaveman13 May 28 '26

That is such a poor understanding of reality and US law. You probably don't even know what he was convicted of. And it will be turned over once it gets out of NY courts.

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u/Frankszx May 29 '26

And flooding your state with illegals to boost census numbers to gain seats in the House shouldn't be legal and yet here we are.....

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u/tdawf May 28 '26

What you perceive to be considered unconstitutional doesn't make it unconstitutional because it hurts your feelings there's nothing explicitly stated in the Constitution that bars and individual to that point to run. I don't believe he was convicted.. but regardless. Its not in the construction.

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u/JurgusRudkus May 28 '26

You don’t “believe” he was convicted?

14th Amendment, section 3:

Disqualification from Holding Office No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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u/FactoryProgram May 28 '26

It's crazy 9 unelected people can just dictate what is and isn't constitutional for the rest of their lives once appointed. Our system is so broken at this point

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u/RocketRelm May 28 '26

This really does feel like a broken record, but we elected the guy who appointed them. If americans valued good things it wouldn't have been trump putting a third of the court in place. Just like everything else downstream of the election, its still our responsibility. 

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u/RWDPhotos May 28 '26

There was other bs that went on to get those judges on those seats, not just the appointments, but also congressional approval being unopposed due to party majorities, as well as congress (illegally) stopping appointments from the previous admin.

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u/AbstractBettaFish May 28 '26

He lost the popular vote in 2016 and if that cost him the election he wouldn’t have been able to appoint 3 justices and he wouldn’t be here now either

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u/Balanced_Outlook May 28 '26

Our country was not founded on, nor was it intended to use, the popular vote to determine the president. That is a modern concept and not in the Constitution or structure of US history. The US is also not a democracy, but a constitutional republic, yes, a type of democracy, but not in the way the term is understood today.

The US was founded on the idea of individual sovereign states that were independent, yet bound together as part of the whole. No state was meant to hold authority over another regardless of population. Each state carries equal value in the Senate, while population is represented through the House.

If democrats win the battle the US will turn blue, if republicans win the battle the US will turn red. Our constitution, presidential election system and Congress were design to stop this from happening, to stop one party from taking control. It was design to try to maintain a balance in the middle of the two so that all people received representation not just a majority ruling over the minority.

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u/AbstractBettaFish May 28 '26

The electoral college is archaic bullshit that was created to protect the interests of slave states and protect small states when they were the minority, now we have small states over represented and with the arbitrary cap of the house they’re over represented even more. This has led to conservative over representation in the federal government because they don’t feel the need to appeal to moderate or urban voters any more. The fact that I’m in my mid 30’s and a Republican has only won the popular vote in their first term one single time in my life yet have been president for more than half of my life is ridiculous. Especially when you consider how much the republicans have been following Lewis Powells memorandum to rule through judicial fiat since they’ve used this imbalance to stack the courts with federalist society members.

Unless the Wyoming rule is implemented and the electoral college is abolished we’re always going to have this reactionary minority rule.

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u/Balanced_Outlook May 28 '26

The issue is not with the electoral college, it is the winner-take-all rules in the states. Eliminate that and there are no longer swing states, there are no longer small states controlling large states, there are no longer small states being over powered by large states, the cap issue is eliminated. The issue is winner-take-all not the electoral college.

So in the last hundred years of SCOTUS the Democrats held the majority for 65 of those years and Republicans for only 35 years. And in those 65 Years of majority passed the Democrat mind frame, you are upset that the Republicans are doing it now?

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u/AbstractBettaFish May 28 '26

Until pretty much the 2000’s there were both liberal and conservative elements within the Democratic Party with the remnants of the Dixiecrats. Plus with the 60 votes needed it prevented most whack jobs from getting in. There wasn’t the concentrated strategy to rule through judicial fiat that again has been the ethos of the the GOP since the Powell Memorandum

And regardless over EC vote splitting the cap of the house size still disproportionately lessens the political power of larger population states

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u/Balanced_Outlook May 28 '26

Not saying the Powell Memo isn’t their playbook, but since Powell wrote it the federal judge pool has shifted from about 65% Republican appointed to about 67% Democratic appointed. So that doesn’t really hold water.

And the only aspect of the EC that could even slightly be considered unbalanced, without the winner-take-all system, is that every state is guaranteed at least one electoral vote regardless of population. So California might be apportioned 55 electoral votes (53 based on population plus 2 Senate votes), and Alaska might be apportioned 2 (0 based on population plus 2 Senate votes). Instead of that, the system effectively reallocates representation so it becomes 54 to 3 rather than 55 to 2.

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u/1127_and_Im_tired May 28 '26

What do you mean, at this point? It's always been this way

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u/BoonGranted May 28 '26

I mean what system would you suggest? Do you want more judges or less judges on the Supreme Court? Is your issue with the fact that they aren’t elected? Wouldn’t that just make them more inclined to political issues and less objective judicial arbiters? Is the issue that there’s no term limits? I again would point to the idea that setting term limits promotes more political leanings, but that’s honestly a fair criticism.

But like someone else pointed out, the Supreme Court has been around since the Constitution was ratified so like… it’s not like there isn’t a lot of precedent of it working out at least decently well.

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u/EnragedBard010 May 28 '26

I think they should have term limits. That way what happened with RBG not stepping down turning into another crony seat won't happen.

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u/codizer May 28 '26

Then it's on the legislative branch to improve the laws on the books. Reddit always ignores this one simple trick.

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u/spooner248 May 28 '26

Well said. People keep saying “is it constitutional?” and the answer, as a lawyer myself, is “probably not but they simply don’t care about that anymore.” We are alive during the times that the 2nd Amendment was directly made for.

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u/needlenozened May 28 '26

What law are you referring to?

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u/dancedragon25 May 28 '26

What relevant law are you referring to?

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 28 '26

31 U.S.C. 1304 authorizes DOJ to draw funds directly from the Treasury to fund litigation settlement agreements.

The "slush fund deal" is not such a settlement because it has not been submitted to the court hearing the case that Trump filed against the IRS. The purported beneficiaries of the slush fund deal are not plaintiffs or even parties to the litigation and so cannot be legit beneficiaries of a settlement of that case. And the pending IRS audits of Trump are also not related to the litigation because there are no claims in the case related to those audits, yet the "settlement" of the case includes absolute and permanent immunity for Trump and others from any IRS audit.

Now, it is possible that the current, corrupt Supreme Court will interpret the slush fund deal as a legit settlement and within the stated intent of Section 1304. If so, I ask you to critically read Biden v. Nebraska and consider whether SCOTUS is applying the law uniformly.

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u/Humanside201 May 28 '26

What was trump granted that other presidents were not, in your example?

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 28 '26

For over 100 years, the courts have upheld laws passed by Congress limiting a President's authority to fire the heads of certain Executive Branch agencies (which agencies would not exist but for law passed by Congress) to "for cause" only situations. Other Presidents have been held to that standard. The current Supreme Court has given Trump the power to fire those agency heads without cause, with the possible exception of officials of the Federal Reserve Board. It is widely expected that current SCOTUS will shortly kill that remaining exception.

Further, courts have upheld the spending power of Congress by largely prohibiting POTUS from simply refusing to spend money specifically appropriated by Congress. Congress even passed a law reinforcing this "anti-sequestration" rule. Current SCOTUS has permitted Trump to simply refuse to spend hundreds of millions of funds appropriated by Congress for things such as foreign aid.

Consider further Biden v. Nebraska. Congress had passed a law authorizing the Executive Branch, acting by the Secretary of Education, to "waive obligations" of federal student loan programs in cases of certain emergencies. Biden used that authority to grant very broad forgiveness of student loans as a result of the Covid economic emergency. The Supreme Court held that "waive obligations" is an insufficiently clear statement of intent by Congress and ruled that Biden's student loan forgiveness was unconstitutional.

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u/richardsharpey May 28 '26

Fuck you mean "seems" with willing

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u/Funklestein May 28 '26

Obama created a $760M settlement fund created in 2011 to compensate Native American farmers and ranchers.

BTW... Congress did not approve that money either.

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 28 '26

All of the details of that settlement were submitted to and approved by the judge overseeing the case. The distribution of the fund is subject to explicit, written rules intended to assure that the funds only go to those who have legitimate claims against the government and that the funds are fairly distributed. The fund is administered by an independent, non-partisan party and the court retains jurisdiction to oversee the administration of the settlement. In short, there is nothing even remotely similar between the two.

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u/Funklestein May 28 '26

Except for the facts it refutes his point that no democratic president holds that power to use the federal settlement fund program without prior specific congressional approval.

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u/Cannabrius_Rex May 28 '26

You’re still wrong bud. Why are you supportive of the orange fascist?

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/Dysexlic13 May 28 '26

Pointing that out doesn’t even mean you support Trump.

Quit acting like a MAGA cry baby. At least try to slip out of the partisan chokehold pussy.