BUSTED: Video suggests Trump botched deadline for lawsuit at heart of $1.776 billion 'slush fund' - Briefing w/Jen Psaki

[Rhiannon12866]

Jen Psaki shares video that suggests that Donald Trump was aware of his tax information being leaked months earlier than he claimed in his lawsuit against the IRS, putting him past the statute of limitations for what is ostensibly the basis of his slush fund settlement.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), former federal prosecutor, explains the legal perspective to Jen Psaki and discusses why Trump's slush fund for criminal political allies is legally doomed. - Aired on 05/20/2026.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. The I.R.S. Thought It Could Fight Trump's Lawsuit, but It Struck a Deal Anyway (New York Times gift article)

Officials wrote a memo outlining ways to challenge President Trump’s suit against the Internal Revenue Service. The administration is instead creating a compensation fund.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/admin/irs-trump-lawsuit-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.j1A.GcX9.msj_9riGDlWg&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service sought to contest President Trump’s lawsuit against the agency, recommending several potential defenses in a case that the Justice Department nevertheless decided to resolve by creating an extraordinary $1.8 billion fund that could soon be used to pay Mr. Trump’s political allies.

I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.

No lawyers from the Justice Department ever appeared in court to respond to the suit or disputed any of Mr. Trump’s claims, which demanded at least $10 billion from the I.R.S. for not doing enough to prevent the leak of his tax information. The Justice Department instead made a highly unusual deal in the case. In exchange for Mr. Trump’s dropping the suit, the Trump administration created the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for people who say they were wrongly targeted by the federal government.

The existence of the internal memo, which has not been previously reported, shows that the Trump administration disregarded readily available defenses to a lawsuit filed by the president against an agency he controls. While the Justice Department has said that Mr. Trump will not receive money from the new fund, critics have slammed the arrangement as a corrupt attempt at paying Mr. Trump’s political supporters, including, potentially, those who were convicted and later pardoned for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.....

The I.R.S. memo was prepared by career civil servants in the agency’s office of chief counsel, who followed the agency’s normal procedures for responding to a lawsuit, the people said. While the Justice Department represents the I.R.S. in federal court, lawyers at the agency routinely provide their views on tax law....

While I.R.S. lawyers followed the typical process for responding to a lawsuit, officials at the Justice Department did not. Lawyers at the Justice Department struggled with whether they could oppose a lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump, The Times previously reported, given that he leads the executive branch and signed an order binding government lawyers to his view of the law.

When the Justice Department neared the mid-April deadline for responding to Mr. Trump’s suit in court, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, rather than the government, asked the judge to extend the deadline. Lawyers for Mr. Trump, in that filing, said they were in talks with unnamed officials at the Justice Department.

Limitations had run. This was a totally bogus lawsuit