Trump Wants His Mugshot on a $250 Bill

The FBI is seizing ballots from swing states, a SCOTUS judge's son has quietly been given a Treasury Department job, and Trump skipped a meeting with wounded soldiers

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

Trump pushed Treasury staff to mock up a $250 bill featuring his own face, using his 2023 Fulton County mugshot. FBI agents grabbed 600 boxes of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, and they’re not stopping there. Justice Samuel Alito’s son quietly took a political appointee job at the Treasury Department while his father ruled on Trump cases involving that very department. And Trump visited Walter Reed for his physical and declined to meet with 14 soldiers wounded in the Iran war.

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Trump Wants His Mugshot on a $250 Bill

Donald Trump wants his face on American currency, because golf courses, skyscrapers, and the Kennedy Center apparently weren’t enough

Trump is reportedly pushing the Treasury Department to print a $250 banknote with his face on it. The image in the mock-up is his 2023 Fulton County jail mugshot, taken after he was indicted on election racketeering charges.

Brandon Beach, the US treasurer, and his adviser Mike Brown (both Trump picks) urged the bureau of engraving and printing to create the mock-ups. One design placed Trump in the center of the bill, signed by Beach and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Trump personally discussed the design with the artist, Ian Alexander, who he calls his “favourite British artist.” Alexander says Trump asked him to add the colors of the US flag and a logo for America’s 250th anniversary.

Congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky is pushing legislation to create the $250 bill for the anniversary. Treasury employees raised alarms internally about the illegality, as it is illegal in the United States to print images of living people on US currency.

No living person has appeared on a US banknote since 1886. The $250 amount is fitting as, like Trump, it’s not a real thing anyone accepts at face value.

The FBI Is Seizing Ballots in States Trump Lost

Most winners spend their first months in office governing. Trump spent his looking for evidence he won even bigger.

In January, FBI agents raided an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, and walked out with 600 boxes of paper ballots from the 2020 election. They also took digital scans, tabulator receipts, and voter rolls.

In March, the Justice Department obtained ballot images from Maricopa County, Arizona. That same month, it demanded ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, this time from the 2024 election, which Trump won.

The Fulton County warrant was initiated by Kurt Olsen, a White House adviser who has spent years helping Trump try to overturn 2020. The prosecutor behind the application is a US attorney based in Missouri. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, tagged along on the raid despite having no domestic law enforcement authority whatsoever.

The probable cause came from a report by an election conspiracy group. Fulton County officials say the DOJ misled the magistrate judge and didn’t mention that the same claims had already been investigated and dismissed in prior audits.

Federal law requires ballots from federal elections be retained for 22 months. Georgia requires 24. These ballots are six years old, and they only still exist because they were part of ongoing civil litigation, which the DOJ bypassed by launching a criminal case so the FBI could just take them.

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Justice Alito’s Son Was Given a Cushy Treasury Job

Philip Alito, 39, son of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, quietly became a political appointee in the Treasury Department’s office of legal counsel early in Trump’s second term.

The Treasury never announced it. He has no public resume, and no listing on the Treasury website. His last court appearance as a prosecutor was an April 1 sentencing for a cocaine case. He was at the Treasury shortly after.

His three bar listings are outdated or wrong. Inside the building, sources say he introduces himself in meetings as “Phil.” Just Phil. As an attorney-adviser, he gets briefed on “all kinds of important Treasury matters” and sits in “all the meetings.”

In November, while Philip Alito was working at the Treasury, the Supreme Court heard a lawsuit challenging Trump’s use of emergency powers to issue tariffs. The Treasury Department was named in the suit. The department did not disclose that the Justice’s son worked there.

Justice Alito did not recuse himself. He joined Kavanaugh’s dissent after the majority ruled in February that Trump lacked the authority to impose the tariffs.

Trump Skipped Meeting With Wounded Soldiers at Walter Reed

Trump went to Walter Reed Military Medical Center on Tuesday for his six-month physical. While he was there, he met with service members and medical staff.

He did not meet with 14 soldiers recovering from wounds sustained in the war in Iran.

On Memorial Day at Arlington, Trump had called the 13 soldiers killed in the Iran war “wonderful souls” who “gave their lives.” On Wednesday he called them “great people.” The living wounded were down the hall.

This is a pattern. Planning a military parade in his first term, Trump told then–chief of staff John Kelly: “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me.”

In 2019, an Army captain named Luis Avila who was severely wounded in Afghanistan sang “God Bless America” at a ceremony for incoming Joint Chiefs chairman Mark Milley. Trump congratulated him in public. In private, he asked Milley, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Apparently, the man who received five draft deferments for bone spurs has thoughts about the optics of sacrifice.

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