Trump’s slush fund scam has a Tennessee-connected origins story

It’s easy to get whiplash from the daily revelations and machinations about President Donald Trump’s sham lawsuit against his own Internal Revenue Service, one doomed to failure but the perfect pretext for negotiating effectively with himself to set up a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

Oh, and not so incidentally, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (Trump’s former criminal attorney) slipped in a scheme to ban the IRS from investigating Trump’s past tax oddities — or those of his companies and family members. One estimate is that it could void some $100 million of back taxes Trump would have owed.

Backlash has been swift. Even a few Republicans summoned the courage to condemn it. The judge in the original IRS case wants to investigate the matter as a fraud on the court. Even the most casual observer can see the intended and likely result is that Trump flunkies would award large chunks of taxpayer money to Trump’s insurrection thugs who attacked law enforcement.

At the moment, Trump minions have dropped the idea — at least for the moment, but are keeping the Trump tax fraud immunity. What should be noted, however, is that misrepresenting the insurrection for financial gain has a legislative history peppered with Tennesseans. In fact, it has echoes in an issue at play in Tennessee’s gubernatorial race. U.S. Rep.  John Rose wants to be Tennessee’s next governor, but standing in the way of his Republican path to office is U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and her substantial campaign war chest.

Stockard on the Stump: Jan. 6 probe creeps into Tennessee gubernatorial race

Rose has crafted a political claim that is too cute by half. Both he and Blackburn last fall supported a huge Republican bill to end a shutdown. Senate Majority Leader John Thune tucked into it a provision that could award certain Republican senators and supporters of Trump the chance to sue the federal government for up to $500,000 for having their phone records examined by the FBI without their knowledge after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Apparently, Rose is not okay with obsequious Trump sock puppets like Blackburn and Tennessee’s other U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty getting awarded taxpayer money, but he also has slammed Special Counsel Jack Smith for having the temerity to investigate who Trump was calling on January 6, presumably to help bolster Trump’s insurrectionist plans. Rose wrote on X in December, “If Jack Smith was a Republican, he’d already be in jail. Less hearings. More accountability.”

Blackburn and Hagerty eventually indicated they wouldn’t seek the money but might want to sue to get a declaratory judgment against the FBI and Smith.

Rose said in November that he rejects the payout of our tax money, and sponsored a move to repeal the provision. Congress sheepishly repealed the controversial provision at the start of February.

If you listen to Rose, Blackburn, Hagerty or any Trump media sycophants, you’d think a power-crazed Justice Department and its special counsel maliciously in some mysterious Arctic Frost inquiry were listening in on the phone calls of Trump devotees.

Nope. It turns out it was just the routine prosecutorial practice of checking phone logs of potential co-conspirators — who called whom, when, and how long did the call last. No content determined, just records.

Smith put it perfectly when he testified in December to a congressional committee. “Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election,” Smith said. “I didn’t choose those Members; President Trump did.”

The better questions to ask would be: What did Trump hope to get from Blackburn and Hagerty in terms of thwarting the peaceful transfer of power? Why did he think either might be particularly helpful in advancing his schemes? Why does Rose think this issue is a winner for him when both he and Blackburn in several instances voted against the certification of state results in the 2020 presidential election  and if they are willing to ignore the recounts, lawsuits and bipartisan investigations that all validated the 2020 election, what color is the sky in their world?

The upcoming Tennessee primaries are not until Aug. 6, but the silly season already has begun, and not just on the racially gerrymandered U. S. House side. Rose and Blackburn likely are going to push each other ever deeper into the obscure absurdities of a shrinking political base, one flatly rejected by not only Democrats but also Independents. These two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates think that only their primary matters; it will be up to the electorate to prove them wrong.