Trump’s lawfare against lawfare
It is of course hacky and hysterical to suggest America is turning into a banana republic. How else, though, can a reasonable person interpret Donald Trump’s settlement this week with the Internal Revenue Service?In January, the President and his two oldest sons sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of their personal business tax filings to the press. Because Trump runs the Justice Department, the case was somewhat farcical: "I’m suing myself," Trump wryly admitted last week. "I’ll say, 'Give me X dollars,' and I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit." This week we found out. IRS lawyers felt their case was defensible on various counts: chiefly because the man who leaked the Trump family files wasn’t working for the service when he gave them to the New York Times.
