Bulwark Takes - Trump Put His Own Lawyers in Charge of His DOJ Payout

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Sarah Longwell and Sam Stein take on Trump’s latest outrage—a $230 million demand that the Justice Department pay him for investigations into his own crimes. They discuss how Trump installed his own lawyers inside DOJ to approve the payout, why it’s one of his most brazen acts of corruption yet, and what it says about the moral rot at the heart of MAGA politics. Get 40% off your Calm premium subscription at https://Calm.com/BulwarkTakes

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of the book. And before we get started with our fearless publisher, Sarah Longwell, let me just make the point that you should subscribe to this feed. It's great feed. And be a subscriber to our subsect, too, because you get some great newsletters.

Sarah's built a real empire. You should check out her podcast, interview with Dylan Byers. It's great, awesome. But for now, we're going to be discussing what I would argue is maybe the most grifty thing, potentially of the Trump years. I mean, it's a lot of competition. It's up there. It's up there. Okay. So this is what happened. There's a story broke from the Times, New York Times this afternoon. The headline says it all. Trump said to demand Justice Department pay him $230 million for past cases. The backstory is that Trump essentially went through the processes where you can more or less counter-sue the Justice Department for the investigations they launched into him during the Biden years. And he wanted a settlement for damages of 230, million dollars and now that he's president he's installed the very people at the justice department

who would have to sign off on the settlement and they might do it we might be cutting this guy two hundred and thirty million dollar check in taxpayer funds and boy i mean it's incredible my my mind is blown by this one one just quick little addition to this is the people that he installed in the justice department were his defense attorney i know right well they're he was being sued. Do they get a cut? That's a good point. I don't know.

But the idea that the people who represented him when he was not the president, who they then installed in the Justice Department, are the ones who were going to make the decision about whether or not he gets access to taxpayer funds to pay him for his grievance over the fact that he didn't return documents that he was told by the. government at the time to return, that he tried to overthrow a free and fair election. Not only is he pardoned the January 6th people who attacked the Capitol and then said the one of the people who ended up unfortunately being shot because she was storming the Capitol,

not only did they give her a hero's burial. Now, he gets restitution from the lawsuits. It is, and when I, when you said, you know, this is up there with the corruption, it is, but It is sort of a piece of all of the corruption. You know, it's funny, I always talk about this, the ability of one scandal, right? Republicans got their hands on the Hunter Biden scandal. And Hunter Biden should not have been charging an absorbent prices for his crappy paintings. And he should not have been using his father's name to try to get, you know, sort of no-show jobs.

Like, I don't think he was a very good individual and caused his doubt a lot of scandal and problems. problems. The Republicans rode that one, the laptop for just years. And that pales in comparison to any single scandal that Donald Trump has been involved in. And there are so many. Go ahead. And then I'm going to list some. Buller takes is sponsored by Com. Is anyone else feeling this year is flying by too fast or not going fast enough, frankly, that where did all the time go anxiety is quite real and it can leave you feeling scattered and behind. Calm gives you permission to slow down even when everything else is speeding up. Calm is the number one app for sleep and meditation and it's here to help you feel better. If you're feeling like you could use some support navigating life's

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Get 40% off Calm premium subscriptions at com.com slash bulwark takes. This is, and I stress this, an amazing value. Go to C-A-L-M.com slash bulwark takes for 40% off unlimited access to KOM's entire library. com. slash World War Tics. Telecom, you heard about them from me. Sam Stein. Thanks a bunch.

Well, I was just going to say a couple things here. One is, it's not that Trump was found innocent in these investigations. It's just that he was made president, elected president, and so the investigations went away. So the restitution is not because, oh, we were sorry, we wrongly tried you, we wrongly investigated you. No, he just didn't. I mean, the documents case just went away because he became president again.

And so from a moral standpoint, you should consider that. Two is, how dare you insult Hunter Biden's artwork? It's fantastic. Three is, I want to read. Oh, I didn't know you were a Hunter Biden art. I own many pieces. No, I just want to read some quotes here because they really understand. You're overpaid for them if you did buy one.

I want, this is just some of the quotations from this. Bennett Gersham, the ethics professor at Pace University is quoted in the piece. Quote, what a travestee. The ethical conflict is just so. basic and fundamental. You don't need a law professor to explain it. Well, he is a law professor and he did explain it. The other thing that I will say is that this is sort of classically Trump, and I'm not sure how the Times got on the story. I'm kudos to them for landing it. But they did kind of give away a little bit about how they got it, which is that Trump kind of just blurted

it out randomly. So apparently he was at the Oval Office last week. He's with Cash Patel and Pam Bondine, Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche's old attorney who's now a deputy at the DOJ. And he just sort of goes rambling on. And he says something that I didn't pick up at the time, but it kind of gave way the game. He says, I have a lawsuit that was doing very well. And when I became president, I said, I'm sort of suing myself. I don't know.

How do you settle that lawsuit? I'll say, give me X dollars. And I don't know what to do with the lawsuit. It sort of looks bad. I'm suing myself, right? So I don't know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful. That's an actual quote.

The eloquence. I know. It's profound, and it's hard to really deal with it. But he just sort of gave away the game, basically. And that's how we discovered this. What's funny is that he's playing dumb in that situation, right? He's sort of being like, I don't know. I'm suing myself.

Isn't that crazy? Hi, boy, I should probably resolve this in some way. What's a good way to resolve it? You give me $250 million. This is funny for a bunch of reasons. And I don't mean funny, ha, ha, I mean funny. Right. Terrible.

But one of them is in the focus groups all the time. from the voters, there is a real sense that Trump is very magnanimous about his money. They're like, he gave up this lifestyle where he could have, you know, could do anything. Sarah, it extends this ballroom where it's continued to believe, everyone believes that he's cutting the check for $250 million east wing ballroom. I'm really glad you brought up the ballroom. Glad you brought up the ballroom. Guys, guys, first of all, a bunch of anonymous donors are paying for that.

uh plus maybe some taxpayers that like it's unclear but here's the thing he says he says that there are donors and if there are i'm sorry do you want people who are trying to suck up to donald trump donating for his weird ballroom is that i mean that is just that is also an unprecedented level of scandal yeah taking the jet from katar or cutter i i get notes that i'm pronouncing it wrong uh when he he he invites the businesses in to get exemptions from his tariffs if they suck up to him enough. And then the covering up of the Epstein files, the way he put Gislane in a minimum security club fed, you know, pardoning the January 6th people who, by the way, one of them just threatened to

kill Hakeem Jeffries. There was like an assassination. Every single one of these is worse on its own than any scandal that plagued to the Biden administration. But Donald Trump is able to, again, like the lawsuits, accrue so many scandals that when you talk, when you like post about Trump's corruption, the number of reply guys, MAGA reply guys who are there to be like, what corruption? What exceeding his authority? And you're like, I don't know how you explain to the American people. Like, this guy is ripping you off every day. He's enriching himself with crypto schemes and he's enriching himself from other countries, his hotels, everything is one big scam. So he's like, don't worry, guys, I'm giving up my salary, my $400,000 salary or whatever

you get for being president. It is astonishing and we shouldn't be immune to it. I'll just say a couple of expenditures that are happening right now, $20 billion, obviously to Argentina and currency exchanges, good stuff. That's B, B, billion. That's a B. We'll go to the M's now here. $173 million for Christine Nome to have two private jets as she goes around the country. Can't just, can't do it with one. One for her, one for the ghost of her dog. RIP, too soon. 250 mil for the ballroom, 2.30 mil for this potential settlement.

That adds up to a fair bit of change at the same time that we're trying to cut back on all the expenditures for, you know, we definitely, yeah, we shouldn't help kids who are dying of AIDS in Africa or feeding starving children. We got to, we got to, we got to, we got to pay Trump for the mental anguish of trying to slow walk the prosecutions for the crimes he definitely committed. Makes sense to me. All right. Well, look, Sarah, thank you for doing this. Thank you for reminding me of my hunter artwork that I got to hang up in the office. Get that. All right. Thank you guys for watching. Subscribe to the feet as always. Talk to you soon. Later.