Hi, I'm Radley Balko, a journalist, author, and proprietor of Substack publication The Watch.
I’ve written at length about police abuse and wrongful convictions. Over the years, I’ve interviewed and gotten to know plenty of people legitimately harmed by bad cops and prosecutors.
But Donald Trump has never served a day behind bars, and there's persuasive evidence that he committed the federal crimes for which he was investigated and charged. Yet as I write in a new piece for Mother Jones, he plans to order the DOJ to pay himself $230 million for the "harm" he suffered from Jack Smith's investigation and for the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate.
That's more money than any death row exoneree has ever seen. In fact, it's more than the total restitution for every Texas exoneree since 2009.
It doesn't end there. Trump also plans to pay his disgraced former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, $50 million in recompense for Flynn’s own supposedly malicious prosecutions, and has endorsed the idea of a reparations fund for January 6 defendants.
Meanwhile, as Trump's immigration officers bring their national campaign of harassment and abuse to New Orleans and Minneapolis, the people on the receiving end will have no recourse in court. That's because it's almost impossible to sue federal law enforcement officials, even for egregious misconduct. Aware of those laws, eight senators whose phone records were subpoenaed by Smith as part of his January 6 investigation snuck a provision into the bill to reopen the government that would allow them to sue for $1 million per phone—even though those subpoenas were perfectly legal and, indeed, routine in criminal investigations.
As I note in the piece, Trump’s payout isn’t just corrupt and cynical, it’s among the most outrageous and infuriating of his many abuses of power. I hope you’ll read my analysis of how MAGA players are claiming victimhood to enrich themselves on the public dime, even as the administration unleashes its cavalry on brown-skinned immigrants—including US citizens—and others whom Trump perceives as enemies.
—Radley Balko
