Addendum quietly slipped into widely criticized agreement creating a $1.7bn fund to compensate president’s allies

The justice department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.

The addendum, signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.

The inclusion only adds to mounting scrutiny of the wider agreement reached on Tuesday. The arrangement was announced after Trump said he was dropping a $10bn lawsuit against the IRS and other specious claims against the government in exchange for creating the compensation fund. IRS officials recommended fighting Trump’s lawsuit, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, but the agency decided to settle it anyway, raising further questions about improper interference.

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I’m saying the pro genocide zealotry coming from politicians is the actual problem. Being against genocide is far from ignorance.

    I understand pragmatism as much as the next guy, and I did take that route, but you will not catch me dead saying the ones that drew the line at genocide are somehow in the wrong.

    The party has to change and they were wrong to push the genocide. It’s as easy as that, and you are pushing against that change and encouraging their behavior.

    And ya, people don’t say it outright but that’s exactly what it implies.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      There will never be a world in which I can agree that people sacrificing everyone’s future, while literally making worse the issue they claim to be prioritizing, is acceptable. It’s myopic and idiotic to do that, and saying so implies nothing more than exactly that.

      I’m inclined to believe that at least half the people spreading this message aren’t that stupid though, but rather bad actors, oftentimes foreign-paid, bad actors.

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        There will never be a world in which I can agree that people sacrificing everyone’s future, while literally making worse the issue they claim to be prioritizing, is acceptable

        Literally what the dems did last election, and they orchestrated the situation instead of just reacting to it.

        I blame the corrupt politicians instead of ordinary folks making a bad decision, especially when the “bad” decision is the actual moral one (still bad in the scope of things, just morally better). You do you bro.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          the “bad” decision is the actual moral one

          It only would have been moral if even the simplest of minds couldn’t have foreseen what their action would lead to. They could have but refused to, thereby accepting full culpability.

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          Literally what the dems did last election, and they orchestrated the situation instead of just reacting to it.

          Interesting that when a small group of people do something, it’s horrifying but if millions do it you’re okay with it.

          • Grimy@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. You choose to blame the guy that was stuck for making the wrong decision instead of the person that literally put the rock there.

            The dems could have built a nice little path.

            Those millions chose wrong but the small group was actually in charge of designing the choice. And through bribes, apathy and pure hatred, they decided to design the shittiest choice they could come up with. This wasn’t something forced on them like it was on the voters, and worse, they were the ones forcing it on the voters.

            There’s a chaine of events here and you are choosing to ignore it.

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              There’s a chaine of events here and you are choosing to ignore it.

              No, that’s what protest voters did and I will always hate them for doing that. I will never, like you, defend that willful ignorance. The only excuse for it would be stupidity and that doesn’t do anything for me or anyone else.

              • Grimy@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                The protest voters came after the dems turned an election into a circus with a side of genocide.

                That’s what I mean by chaine of events, the protest voters ignoring etc and making mistakes came after the dems deliberate actions.

                  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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                    2 hours ago

                    Nope, it doesn’t. That being said, there’s a group of people that essentially paid the dems to lose last election, and they don’t want to be seen as the problem that they are.

                    Blaming and shaming voters only helps that group. It doesn’t help us, it doesn’t help democracy, it doesn’t help the party. Alienating isn’t the best way to make them vote either. Tbh, it shouldn’t be up to them to cave first when it’s about genocide in any case.

                    It’s misspent energy and detracts from the pressure that the party should be facing. It’s as I said, a scapegoat built to avoid having to change.