Editorial: Slush fund is the biggest heist in history

Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Jun 1, 2026

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The man who boasted that he could get away with murder on Fifth Avenue is pulling off something just as brazen. The $1.8 billion slush fund from which President Donald Trump intends to reward people who tried to steal the 2020 election for him is the biggest heist in our history.

It’s like breaking into Fort Knox and driving off with a truckload of bullion.

Todd Blanche, his obsequious acting attorney general, also agreed to immunize America’s real-life Goldfinger, his entire family and their business from IRS audits, fines and penalties or prosecution for whatever tax violations they may have committed.

That corrupt bargain may save the Trumps $100 million, by some estimates. Al Capone’s ghost must be green with envy.

Trump was already by far the most corrupt American president. But his grifting had been largely at the expense of foreign governments and other interests.

No more. His “anti-weaponization fund” is a new frontier in graft, a direct theft from taxpayers. The most corrupt act in presidential history lacks even the pretense of the lawsuit that Trump withdrew when a federal judge saw it for a sham.

The Big Steal

Trump deserves a third impeachment — another reason to elect a Democratic Congress in November — and one more indictment when his term ends, as this Big Steal has nothing to do with any official duty.

As for Blanche, he should be disbarred as fast as New York authorities can manage it. Trump is his former personal client as well as his present boss; there couldn’t be a more glaring conflict of interest for any lawyer.

Of note: Blanche’s Department of Justice is suing the District of Columbia Bar to thwart discipline of two other Trump stooges. And it proposes a regulation to suppress bar proceedings anywhere, against any present or former DOJ lawyer such as Blanche himself.

A federal court has, thankfully, already put a temporary hold on the fund until a June 12 hearing. The courts are Americans’ only hope of stopping this theft; Trump owns Congress through his control of MAGA voters who decide Republican primaries.

He’s been on a roll on that front, gloating over the defeat of such principled politicians as Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to remove him from office in 2021; Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who fought to publish the Epstein files; and Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who as Secretary of State refused to “find” phony votes for Trump in 2021 and who just ran for governor.

The coup de grace: Texas

The climax came Tuesday in Texas with Sen. John Cornyn’s defeat by Ken Paxton, the sleazy state attorney general, a leading election denier for Trump who had been impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature over allegations of bribery and obstruction.

Trump’s revenge tour also took down five Indiana state senators who had voted against the midterm gerrymandering to which Florida’s gutless Republicans have agreed. South Carolina’s GOP legislators deserve a special medal of courage for refusing to redistrict Jim Clyburn, a widely respected senior Black Democrat, out of his seat, too.

Belatedly, some GOP senators seem to have finally had it with Trump. They were shouting at Blanche behind closed doors last week when he refused to rule out payments to the hoodlums who tried to kill police officers protecting them on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republican Thom Tillis, who is not running for re-election in North Carolina, called the slush fund “stupid on stilts.” He and others see the GOP losing the midterms on Trump’s account, as they should, for indulging him.

Scandals, incorporated

There’s no short list of Trump’s corruption scandals; more than 100 by one count. Some of the most glaring:

— Crippling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to lay off the prediction markets and the cryptocurrency industry in which the Trumps are deeply involved;

— Easing AI chip sale restrictions for the United Arab Emirates after it invested $2 billion in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto business;

— Accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar, a foreign government, and promising to defend it from attacks; and

— Pardoning Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, who had been in prison for serious banking law violations. The pardon lets him run Binance again and benefit the Trumps’ crypto business.

An honest president and a responsible Congress would put a quick stop to the corruption. Repairing Trump’s vandalism of the economy, the treasury, almost every agency and institution of the government, our foreign relations and our national reputation and, not least, our national self-respect, will take much longer.

None of it — not even the slush fund — is as dangerous as the political legacy Trump has created by cultivating MAGA into a cancer on the Republican Party and on the country.

Trump saw and exploited a significant bloc of voters who do not care about democracy the way Americans are supposed to. They will still be there when Trump is gone, ready for the next man on horseback to point them in the direction of their bigotries and fears.

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