Bulwark Takes - Yes, Trump’s Disgraceful IRS Settlement is REAL

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Andrew Egger and Joe Perticone give their takes on Trump’s shocking new $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” settlement fund, a scheme that could funnel taxpayer money to January 6 defendants and other Trump allies. They explain how the administration rushed the deal to avoid judicial scrutiny, why Congress likely won’t stop it, and how Republicans could end up politically trapped ahead of a tough midterm season defending payouts to convicted rioters.Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor you love today.

Wealth isn't a fixed point. It's a journey, guided by a steady hand through uncharted waters. At Canoe Financial, we are active fund managers and independent thinkers, focused on building and protecting your wealth. Chart your course. Ask your advisor about Canoe Financial. So this settlement fund, it's real. Donald Trump really is creating this one.

$1.7 billion pot of money to pay out to a bunch of his allies, a bunch of his people who were supposedly had the government weaponized against them under Joe Biden. It's really happening. They're saying it all out in public. I'm Andrew Eager with the Bullwork, White House correspondent for the Bullwork. I joined today to talk about this with our congressional correspondent Joe Perticokeone. Joe, the anti-weaponization settlement. It's here. It's real. It's $1.7 billion. It's beautiful. First of all, I guess my first question is when this was reported as a likely thing Friday. you, as I did, have a little bit of a, oh, come on. Like, it can't quite possibly be quite as shameless as ABC is suggesting. Or did you actually think it was going to be a really, really real

from Go? Nothing's like ever not as shameless as you think it'll be. But the point is like 1.77 billion. It's 1.776 billion, 1776. So let's at least, you know, breathe a sigh of relief that it's not 47 billion to honor the 47th president. Yes, yes. There are symbolic. numbers that are larger that he could in theory have tried to cook up. That's true. And they love doing that. They love branding things 47, 1776. Yeah, this happened very quickly. At least he's dropping his $10 billion suit against his own government that he's the head of. But the way this is going to go down now is like a lot of these J-6ers are just going to get cash. And the way that this will move is so fast that it's going to be everything.

things improbable, but it's impossible to stop because Congress isn't going to intervene. I'm anticipating when I go to the Hill later today that they'll say, well, I haven't seen the full details yet. And by the time they maybe have seen the details, money will be in the pockets and the taxpayer will be fleeced. Yeah. So let's pause here for a minute and break this down a little bit, because this is one of those stories. I mean, it's like looking at the Grand Canyon, right? It's like you almost like cannot wrap your mind around the size and the majesty. of the shamelessness and the corruption that's on offer here. So the genesis of all of this, this is a lawsuit that's been going on for a little while now.

It's been Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of his tax returns, as well as the tax returns of some other wealthy people, by an outside IRS contractor a few years ago. That guy went to prison for this, but Trump is not satisfied with that. He wants damages. He wants $10 billion in damages. This lawsuit has been proceeding despite the fact that everybody has been looking at it and saying, how can this really work when Donald Trump is suing in his personal capacity a government that he now runs? The people who are, you know, the named defendants in

this case, the IRS, the Treasury Department, these are people who report to him in a very, you know, there's no pretense of, of, uh, independence of, of, you know, them go in their own way. Nobody in their right mind imagines that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is going to, you know, stand up to the president and fight hard in an adversarial lawsuit to keep him from getting what he wants in this lawsuit. And so even the judge, even the judge in this case has been wondering exactly that. The judge has been asking the two parties, asking plaintiffs or asking lawyers for Donald Trump and asking lawyers for the government to basically send her briefs saying why she ought to believe that they are essentially not on the same side in this case. And that is

the most striking thing about this settlement right now is that it appears to have been rushed out in order to beat a deadline imposed by that judge, a May 20th deadline imposed by that judge, to file those exact briefs, right, to basically not let this judge have a chance to throw this case out on the grounds that there is no adversarial process happening here. So that's why this is all happening right now, you know, two days before when that deadline would be. The attempt is to sort of short circuit this, get the judge out of the loop completely, just let Donald Trump's personal lawyers and Donald Trump's employees at Treasury and the IRS hash it all out. And this is the result, this $1.776 billion fund.

So, Joe, you were talking a minute ago about, you know, the very likely complete lack of response that we're going to see from Congress here. Can you just talk a little bit about, like, I mean, what could happen? Like, imagine we're in a different universe where we don't already know that this Republican Congress is utterly spineless. they're not going to get in the president's way. I mean, surely, even though they have sort of cleverly gotten the judge out of the loop here, Congress itself as a body is not powerless to touch something like this. Congress can do almost anything at once, especially when it comes to things like money and where government money is spent.

Something like this, that money's already been appropriated, in which they have money for these large funds, settlements that regularly occur because, somebody is wronged by the government. People can sue the government all the time, not always successful. So that money exists. A way Congress could step in, but won't, is that they could say, actually, no, you can't do this. That money does not apply, or they can pass lossing. All of this settlement money for various suits against the government no longer apply to this case. They could do oversight things where they say, we need to know exactly the name and amount of

every individual receiving money from this fund because there's a very common theme among pardoned and convicted January Sixers is that they go and recommit other crimes, sometimes more heinous than trying to overthrow the government, believe it or not. So there's going to be a lot of criminals who could very likely end up with the cash from this fund. So there's oversight capabilities. The reality of what will happen is this will. probably go through. It'll probably go really fast. We see in the government's points about what this entails is that there's not going to be liability once this money is dispersed. So these

individuals would get this money. The government should retain records of who gets money, whether that's public or not. We won't know. For example, when if Democrats take back the House of Representatives and then they have jurisdiction over the Oversight Committee, They could use that to probe this, how it happened from start to finish, if they traced and retained records of where this money went and who got it and how much. They'll be able to do that. But at the same time, the oversight committee has a very full plate because there is widespread corruption in this government right now that they're already going to be pursuing. They're looking at insider trading on prediction markets. They're looking at the Trump sons getting their taste all around the globe by investing in these companies that the government then decides they need to prop up and be involved in.

They're looking at the president's own stock transactions from companies he's boosting as president and therefore profits when their stock goes up. They have a really full plate. This is going to be one more of those things. There's going to be a lot more that happen in the final, you know, eight months. months of seven, eight months of the year. If they take back the house, which they likely will, then they have all of these things that they have to pursue, and this is just another one. So will they have space for it? That's my question for members of the Oversight Committee, some of the Democrats, if they're going to pursue oversight of this fund, the way that they're going to pursue

oversight across the board. I would probably say yes, but these things can get, you know, lost. in a very big pool of corrupt acts. Yeah, well, I mean, it's not up to me. If it were up to me, my vote is this goes straight to the top of the pile. I mean, this is really astonishing stuff. I mentioned before that it's, you know, it's sort of like the Grand Canyon in terms of the scope and the size and the majesty of it. We could just like sit around continuing to list sort of like further aggravating facts about

this thing for quite some time. Let's just do a few of those right now. And again, we know so little about this fund. we basically just have a cheat sheet that the Justice Department has chosen to release in terms of like the basic facts of what's going on here. But even just in that, even just in what we're getting out of acting attorney general Todd Blanche right now, there's still just so much that should just make your eyeballs pop out of your head. So let's just do a couple of those right now. First of all is the dollar amount, right? The $1,776 million that's in the account here.

This is from the document. The corpus of the anti-weaponization funds funding does not represent the value of any claim by plaintiffs, but rather is based on the projected valuation of future claimant's claims. So that's obviously a lie. They did not actually do any work to sort of like tally up what they think. All of the people who have weaponization claims against the Biden government, against the Biden administration, they did not sort of do the clerical work of deciding, we actually think that those will come out, those payouts will come out to this amount of money.

No, they just picked a big patriotic sounding number. then they said, come on, guys, come on in, the water's fine, come get your cash, which leads me to a second thing here, which is that in, you know, like you said before, this is not a totally unused mechanism, this settlement fund from the Justice Department, this is money that is set aside to pay out settlements that the government has reached with people who are suing it in various capacities. However, there are a number of enormous differences in the specifics of what that entails because usually when you have, you know, a group that's that's suing the government in this capacity, they are a specific class of people. They have, they're well documented and established in

court grievance. They have established that they have standing to sue. They've gotten a certain distance into the proceeding. So those are the people who are going to get money. This is a completely different thing. This civil suit had one plaintiff, Donald Trump. And as a settlement for that, we are now throwing open the gates to who knows which claimants. There's, there's been no suggestion that there's any particular class of claimants other than people that the Justice Department and this board that's been set up to oversee this money will determine later ought to get these disbursements. Then there's another thing, which you alluded to a minute ago, Joe. I'll just read it here. Once the funds are deposited into the designated account,

the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds. Again, this is just like one of the nine relevant facts. that the Justice Department has seen fit to tell us, you know, right off the top is going to be true about this money, is that they can't be held accountable for misuse of it or fraud. Other facts that we haven't even mentioned yet, these are people who serve at the, at the pleasure of the president, you know, the people, the five members of this, of this board who are going to be, you know, responsible for divvying out this cash, can be fired and replaced by the president of the

United States at any time without cause. He gets to decide. He gets to decide which of his allies will get these $1.7 billion. Raise your hand if you've ever been putting off a dental cleaning, an annual checkup, or honestly any kind of doctor's appointment. Yeah, hands up right here. That's me. When something feels off, I usually just doomscroll my symptoms and spiral quietly to myself thinking about all the maladies that await. Does that sound familiar? Well, this year, things are going to be different. We're finding doctors we love, and we're booking appointments with Zoc Doc. Zoc Doc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors

so you can find someone who you love. I like using Zockdoc when I need to go see a dermatologist because I'm worried about that little rash on my arm. Just got to figure it out. Or when I need to find a good dentist because God knows, it's been a while since I've gotten my teeth cleaned. So stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoc.com slash bulwark takes to find an instantly book A Doctor You Love Today. That's ZOCDOC.com slash bulwark takes. Zockdoc.com slash bulwark takes. Thanks to Zocktok for sponsoring this message. I guess I wanted to get one more take from you, Joe, on the specific question of what Congress can do. Because I think you're right that this is going to start fast. We are already seeing this online.

Like a lot of the sort of J6 community influencer type guys are rejoicing and they're, you know, they're all scurrying. to get ready to get their piece of the pie. So there's going to be sort of a run on the bank here. At the same time, it takes a long time to disperse $1.7 billion. That's a lot of money. In theory, this fund is supposed to stick around all the way through December 2028. That's one thing we've seen.

So is there a world? I mean, like, couldn't you imagine a world where this thing really does kind of come back to bite Republicans if Democrats end up back in the driver's seat and are constantly wanting to tee up like new votes on this sort of stuff to block the ongoing disbursement of these funds, I could see this sort of becoming like a millstone around their necks. Yeah, so something I would anticipate in the coming days is a unanimous consent request to say, nope, can't do this.

It'll get rejected right away. In terms of a floor vote in which they all have to go on record. And here's the thing. It's like, Republicans in Congress, other than like, you know the ones, they don't like to constantly relitigate January 6th by having to hold votes of condemnation or support or things like that. And so as long as this sticks around and as long as members of Congress keep bringing it up, it really pisses off some of the frontline Republicans who they just want to talk about their tax cut bill. They don't want to talk about January 6th, especially ones who

weren't even in Congress in 2021. They don't want to have to keep. relitigating this. And so you could see complaints kind of trickle up to leadership. Maybe there's one, you know, they can take care of this in one fell swoop, whether that's the establishment of oversight or stopping in its tracks. I don't think either of those are likely. But as long as they keep having the ability to vote on this, like you said, the fund is expected to go through 2028. If it's slow rolled, and for example, that that money is not full dispersed by the time that the Democrats control the House, possibly the Senate, it can create a lot of problems. Likely when we see a government funding deadline, you start to see members of Congress

tack things on of their little pet projects and it can derail the whole thing. And there can be deals made in which maybe some of this money is clawed back or they demand oversight of it. So there's a lot of different things that can happen from this. In terms of right now, it's going to be full steamhead. And the people who were convicted and pardoned and some who weren't awaiting trial, but were pardoned in January 6th are seeing this as, I can grab some cash. Some of those people, it's going to be a lot of money. Others, it might be, you know, a much smaller piece. but the idea that like this is completely unrelated to the original suit also makes it makes you question the legitimacy of it if you're a member of Congress and that that gives you more

standing to demand answers on it. I really do think this is going to be a real headache for a lot of elected Republicans down the line and it obviously should be for a very good reason. At the same time, like, I don't know. It's just kind of cold comfort, just sort of in, when stacked against just the really astonishing, infuriating, ostentatious corruption of it. Just right out in the open. I don't know. Like, I, I, I almost feel like I'm going to, like, lose control of sort of my vocabulary

here and just start spluttering about this one. Because, I mean, it's just, how do you, how do you rank this sort of up against, I don't know, like the crypto nonsense and, you know, the spy sheiks and the oil barons, you know, pouring billions of dollars into the president's, you know, crypto exchanges and the, and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, what I forget, wait, was it a, you, a, you know, for the new Air Force one. I mean, how do you stack this stuff up, uh, not, not to make you put on your sort of, like, pundit hat, uh, Joe, but, uh, but, um, am I crazy to, like, sort of see this as one of one

in a different way? So, all of the corruption, most, almost all of the corruption that we've seen over the past year plus of Trump being president. The people enriching themselves are his inner circle, his boys, his sons, his friends, the acting attorney general of the United States, his previous job was the president's criminal defense attorney. Okay. So all of the people participating in this are part of the president's club, his friends, his inner circle. This is a different situation in which his loyal footsol, who he doesn't give a rat's ass about, they're the ones who are getting a piece of the pie. So it's a new component of it.

And unlike a lot of the people who have just gotten away with crimes and corruption for a long time, these are people who were convicted of crimes and who he, you know, we thought that the pardon was like the big gift to them, which obviously it was. But this is just another component of that. I'm surprised that it got this far, but the fact that if the, this was established. If you had told me the day after Trump's inauguration in 2025, that this was being created now, I fully believed it. This is just like a minor subplot in the grand story of Trump's second term, is that it's getting your friends and your

loyal subjects paid and not really addressing anything else. Well, I don't know. Maybe maybe I will comfort myself slightly with this, which is that what you said is true. I had not really thought about it in these terms of all of those other schemes and scams being about enriching Trump and his immediate cronies. And some of the like smaller ball scams also about enriching Trump and his immediate cronies at the expense of those very fans. I mean, he usually sees them more as people to bilk additional money out of rather than hand money back to. So I don't know. Maybe there's some sense in which, you know, at this moment in time, while the president's popularity is truly collapsing and descending to, you know, hereto-for unplumbed depths in terms of him losing

the coalition that helped him get elected. And it really is just sort of this core of the core of the base that are still sticking with him. Maybe the president is actually feeling a little bit of anxiety. He can't really take these people quite as much for granted anymore. He needs to start actually giving back. And he sure can't do that in terms of actual policy stuff. He sure hasn't been able to do that with the price of gas or the price of groceries, the price of anything else. or, you know, peace in the world or, you know, delivering the sort of like, vengeance campaign against various political enemies and public servants that he promised. And so, and so maybe there's a little bit of anxiety and panic.

They're like, gosh, I really got to give these guys something. Let's just do a cash payout, you know, to keep them on side. So I don't know. Maybe there's something there. And politically, this doesn't do anything for him. Like the base and like not even the whole base, but like a sliver of the base who consumes copious amounts of right wing media who's very online, who is going to vote for him and his priorities and the people he tells him to vote for and no matter what, they're going to be really happy. But that's not, that's not an election shifting block of people. The coalition that he built to win in 2024, they're fully departing.

If you see like the Hispanic coalition, young people, all the people who switched to being Republicans for the first time really ever, they're all running away in droves. And so this doesn't accomplish anything of value for him politically. These people primarily exist in deep red areas anyway. There's really no value here. What it does is it creates a massive headache for, like I always look at everything from a perspective of Congress and congressional races because that's what I do. this just creates a headache for someone like Jen Kagan's in Virginia who's running for her life

to maybe possibly win re-election. She's probably not going to, even with the new Virginia map or the old Virginia map reinstated, this doesn't do anything. This just creates someone like me or maybe another reporter saying, why is this okay? And that's not a good thing for like all the other stuff he wants to keep doing and getting away with. Like, Congress not doing anything during these first two years of his second term, they're not doing anything and they're letting him get away with stuff. If they're not in power, he has less room to get away with this kind of behavior. And so this accomplishes nothing for him.

And I actually think it's very much a negative in terms of like looking at it politically. So if you tune into Fox News after watching a video, video on the Bull Works YouTube channel, you know, and they start talking about how great this is and how it's reinvigorating the base. Don't buy it. Don't buy the hype. Yeah, yeah. All right. I think, I think we've basically done a pretty good job scaring up all the possible silver linings that there are to say about this. In fact, I think we're to be commended for finding as many as they are as we have. But I do think, just to kind of put it back once more from the top at baseline. This is, I mean, maybe I feel more strong about this than you do, Joe,

but I really do think that this is like even beyond the sort of pale of what we have typically seen from the president, just in terms of shameless pilfering of taxpayer money. It's not from some guy he's scammed specifically. It's not from some foreign billionaire who's happy to pay it because he gets something out of it in terms of a policy outcome. This is just straight plundering the U.S. Treasury to send a bunch of money to people who it was already, you know, totally intolerable and shameless because they're a bunch of

criminals and, you know, people who tried to overturn by force an American election by storming the Capitol and trying to, you know, rough up a bunch of lawmakers. All those people who did, in fact, rough up a bunch of Capitol police, all those guys got their pardons. They got out of it. And now I guess we're going to give them a big, like, Mr. Monopoly-style bag of cash for their trouble. And that's where we are right now, you sort of even setting aside a lot of these silver-lining things. It sucks. It's really bad out there. Joe, you got anything else for the people? Yeah, it's just like it's the message to his most violent supporters that crime pays. And so if you think, oh, January 6th, that was that one-time thing, they have been given the message that they will not only be pardoned, there's now a chance they're going to get paid.

And we talk about precedents being broken. This sets a horrible precedent among many horrible precedents. Yeah. What a mess. All right. We'll leave it there. following this story. This is going to be giant news. It already has giant news, obviously.

But hopefully, if there's any justice in the world, it will remain giant news. It won't be one of these stories where, you know, three months from now, we'll look back and we'll be like, whoa, remember that? I'm not sure weird when you set up that fund. And then nobody ever followed up on it. And they just sent all that money out the door. So we'll see. Regardless, thanks, thanks, Joe, for coming on to talk about all this stuff. Thanks to you all out there for watching. Hope you subscribe to the Bullworks YouTube channel. Head over to the Bullwork.com. You can get Joe's newsletter. You can get my newsletter. lots of good stuff all the time.

We're going to keep following this one, so we'll see you here next time.