Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said the proposed Trump-IRS settlement was “unconstitutional.”
Partial transcript as follows:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve called this proposed settlement a fraud. Is it illegal? And are you confident the courts will block it?
RASKIN: Yes. Well, let’s start with this, George, only Congress has the power to appropriate money. And Congress never voted on creating this $1.7 billion political slush fund at the Department of Justice. And Congress would never pass that. There’s no way he could get that through Congress. So, this is just an invention on his part. But even if Congress wanted to do it, I think it’s clearly unconstitutional on a number of grounds. To begin with, if you look at Section Four of the 14th Amendment, it says that no money can be spent by the federal government for the purposes of paying for insurrection or rebellion. So, to the extent that he wants to give a million dollars to each of 1,600 pardoned rioters and insurrectionists, we think that that’s an unconstitutional use of money.
Now, we know that the president wants to keep setting up these political slush funds. He’s done it with the Board of Peace. He’s done it with the Venezuelan oil profits. I think he’s got an account in Qatar where that money is going. He’s done it with the billion dollar ballroom. Originally he said he was raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the purposes of the ballroom. Now he wants a billion dollars directly from the taxpayers. All of this is outside of the Constitution. All of it is outside of congressional spending power. And so, it is illegal. It is unconstitutional.
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