Trump Sued Himself and Won a $1.8 Billion Slush Fund

Your local poll workers are training to prepare for election interference, an ICE agent has been charged for shooting a man through his door, and prisoners Kristi Noem pardoned are re-offending

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump just turned a lawsuit he filed against his own government into a $1.8 billion fund he controls. Election officials across the country are preparing slide decks about what to do if the FBI shows up at a polling place. An ICE agent who shot a Venezuelan man through a closed door and then lied about it has been charged with assault. And most of the prisoners quietly and illegally pardoned by Kristi Noem have re-offended.

Before we get into it: Somewhere out there, a news organization is deciding how hard to push a story based on whether it costs them an advertiser. We are not doing that calculation because we do not have advertisers. What we have is a straightforward arrangement where we write what happened, you pay for it, and nobody in between gets to have opinions about the result. If that sounds like something worth having, become a paid subscriber today.

Now, let’s dive in.

The President Filed a Lawsuit Against Himself and Won

If you tried to sue your own employer and walked away with $1.7 billion, you would be in prison. Donald Trump is in the White House

Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion on the grounds that the Biden administration had “weaponized” it against him. The judge overseeing the case had already ordered both sides to explain why the parties were adversarial enough for the lawsuit to legally proceed.

The answer was: they weren’t. Trump dropped the suit. In exchange, his Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who claim they were wrongly targeted by the Biden administration.

The amount is not a coincidence. The nation turns 250 this year. The robbery is patriotic.

The fund will pay out claims from people alleging Biden-era persecution. Republicans have never produced evidence of it. But people who say there was can now apply for a payout from a pool of taxpayer money managed by Trump’s hand-picked officials, with minimal oversight, through December 2028.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the same man who swore he’d released all the Epstein files, issued a statement about how “the machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American.”

Welcome to the machine.

The People Running Your Elections Are Quietly Preparing for a Fight

Local election officials already had protocols for fires, floods, and aggressive voters. They are now adding a slide on what to do if the FBI shows up.

At least 71 percent of local election officials have begun some form of preparation for federal interference in the November midterms, according to a Brennan Center survey. The scenarios they are planning for include National Guard troops at polling locations, federal agents demanding access to ballots and voting machines, and the Postal Service refusing to deliver mail ballots because the White House told it to.

That last part stems from a March executive order directing the USPS to mail ballots only to voters on a federally approved citizenship list compiled by DHS and the Social Security Administration. Election law experts say the order is almost certainly unconstitutional.

Three federal courts have already blocked provisions of Trump’s first election executive order. The president has called this new one “legally foolproof.” Friendly reminder that he votes by mail.

In Wisconsin, a county clerk said local law enforcement won’t confront National Guard troops at polling sites because “the only recourse is really a legal one.” A Republican county clerk in Colorado is quietly shoring up relationships with local law enforcement so that any federal intrusion is “met with a pretty good force of resistance.” In Washington state, officials are encouraging voters to use drop boxes.

Six states hold primaries tomorrow. Thank god for the slide deck.

The people running your elections are preparing for everything they can think of. We’re preparing too. We can be here in November, but only if you become a paid subscriber today.

ICE Agent Who Shot a Man Through a Door Has Been Charged

Christian Castro shot a man, lied about it to the FBI, and somehow Julio Sosa-Celis is the one who spent weeks in federal custody.

Castro, an ICE agent, shot Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man, through the front door of a Minneapolis duplex on January 14. Then, according to prosecutors, he lied about it to fellow agents, to medical staff, and to the FBI.

The story Castro told was vivid. He had been attacked with a snow shovel and a broom handle. He fired in self-defense. DHS put Sosa-Celis’s mugshot on the internet. Kristi Noem called it “attempted murder.” The two Venezuelan men inside were federally charged with assaulting a federal officer.

Then the video emerged. A 911 dispatcher had turned a camera toward the duplex. It showed a brief struggle in the yard. A shovel and broom were nearby. There was no indication they were used as weapons. The bullet had traveled through the front door and through multiple interior walls before lodging in a bedroom wall where several small children slept.

The agents had followed the wrong person to the wrong house.

The DOJ quietly dropped all charges against both men in February. Two ICE agents were placed on administrative leave for making “untruthful statements” under oath. On Monday, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty went further: Castro has been charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. A nationwide arrest warrant has been issued.

The Criminals Kristi Noem Secretly Pardoned Have Been Arrested Again

Kristi Noem secretly pardoned nineteen prisoners and twelve of them went straight back to committing crimes, which raises some questions about her judgment that are separate from all the other questions about her judgment.

Twelve of the nineteen prisoners Noem pardoned as governor have since been charged with new crimes. Seven are facing felony charges, mostly drug offenses, with the rest involving DUI and/or domestic violence. Nine of the twelve have already pleaded guilty.

Noem pardoned the prisoners without the legally required endorsement of the state Board of Pardons and Parole, something no South Dakota governor had done in roughly two decades. She did it twice: seven pardons on Christmas Eve 2022, twelve more in 2023.

Victims’ families were not notified. In at least one case, the person she released had already been denied a recommendation by the board.

Meanwhile, the eight prisoners Noem pardoned through the proper board process have done considerably better. Five were released and only one has been charged with a new crime.

One of Noem’s first actions as governor was pledging in a 2019 executive order to follow the board process. No further punchline necessary.

Nobody Owns This Newsletter But You

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