Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the Center for Economic and Policy Research. It is from Dean Baker’s Beat the Press series.
Trump hasn’t taken $2 trillion from taxpayers yet, but we should be prepared for that possibility. The story, which cannot possibly be given too much attention, is Trump’s demand that his Justice Department hand him $230 million because he doesn’t like the way he was treated over alleged crimes. This is straight-out theft from the government.
For a little orientation, it is extremely difficult for people being investigated or prosecuted for crimes to ever collect damages from the government, even when the government has engaged in totally improper behavior, as the New York Times pointed out in a piece this morning. Furthermore, it is difficult to see anything improper in the investigations and prosecutions pursued against Trump.
Starting with the so-called “Russia Hoax,” we have as a matter of public record that Donald Trump Jr. arranged a meeting, involving the two other top people on Trump’s 2016 campaign, the purpose of which was to get dirt from the Russian government on Trump’s opponent. Whether or not anything Trump personally did involved a crime requires a greater knowledge of specifics and the law than I possess, but it seems hard to maintain that there was nothing warranting investigation.
In the documents case, Trump refused to turn over documents in his possession that were repeatedly requested by the National Archives. His lawyers also gave false information about the documents that were still in Trump’s possession. Again, that certainly seems like something meriting investigation, although Trump nixed his own prosecution aer he won the election.
There is a similar story with the prosecutions around his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In addition to sponsoring the January 6th attack on the Capitol, Trump also threatened the Secretary of State of Georgia with prosecution if he didn’t “find” 11,780 votes for him. It’s a pretty serious stretch to say this didn’t warrant investigation.
But beyond the absurdity of the claim that Trump was poorly treated, it’s worth asking what the $230 million demanded by Trump has to do with reality? Even if all the investigations were improper, what damage did Trump suffer? He had legal fees, but how high could these have possibly been. If he paid $1,000 an hour for his lawyers, and had 2,000 billable hours on each case, that would get to $6 million. That’s less than 3 percent of what Trump is demanding.
I suppose the rest of the $230 million is supposed to be for “pain and suffering,” Donald Trump’s feelings were hurt. In that case the government would be giving Trump more than 100 times what a typical worker would earn in a lifetime for his hurt feelings.
But worse than the absurdity of this story is the fact that there is no one to stop him. If the Attorney General doesn’t give Trump the money he is demanding (she will), he would just fire her and find an Attorney General who will.
Congress could in principle put a check on this, for example by impeaching Trump for blatantly illegal actions, but Speaker Johnson says he doesn’t know anything about it, and therefore has no comment. Since the payment was already widely reported at the time, we should probably assume that Johnson will never know anything about it. In other words, if Trump wants to take $230 million from the taxpayers, he has a greenlight.
How do we get from $230 million to $2 trillion? Well, if Trump can get the government to write any check he wants, there is no reason for him not to go really big. He even has a story readily waiting.
Trump claims to have brought in $20 trillion to the country in foreign investment. This claim has nothing to do with the real world. The tiny grain of truth in Trump’s claim is that he has gotten vague commitments from various countries of future investments as part of his trade deals, that may come to a bit more than one-twentieth of this sum. But reality has no place in Trump world.
Since Trump is running around claiming he has gotten $20 trillion for the country, it seems perfectly reasonable that he should get a commission, say 10 percent. This would get him $2 trillion. I’m sure he’ll even promise to give much of it to charity.
Yes, that is completely absurd, but there is no reason to believe that anyone would stop Trump from such a ridiculous money grab. Maybe Trump will be satisfied pocketing our $230 million, but don’t bet on it.
Dean Baker is a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
