Another month of iced-over war in Iran, another thirty-day extension of America’s sanctions waiver on Russian oil to try to take some of the pressure off the world’s Strait-of-Hormuz energy shock. We’re with Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeanne Shaheen on this one: “Every additional dollar the Kremlin earns from this license helps [Vladimir] Putin finance his illegal war against Ukraine and kill innocent Ukrainians.” Happy Wednesday.

Command Post with Mark Hertling and Ben Parker will be live on Substack and YouTube at 10:30 a.m. EDT today to talk about the latest news out of Iran and another withdrawal of American forces from Europe.

Of Slush Funds

by Andrew Egger

Someday I’ll need to take a break from writing about Donald Trump’s outrageous “anti-weaponization fund”—Lord knows there are plenty of other outrages clamoring for our attention. But there’s no helping it for now: The thing just keeps getting more ridiculous day after day.

The big news in this department was the remarkable “supplement” to the settlement agreement that the Justice Department quietly revealed yesterday: a one-page document stating that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from prosecuting tax claims against anyone in the Trump family or Trump’s businesses.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave no explanation for this utterly shameless attempt to place the president and his associates permanently above the law. And why would he have? We don’t need explanations for what is obvious on its face: Blanche is auditioning for the permanent AG job by giving Trump constant reassurances he’ll run the Justice Department exactly like he used to run Trump’s criminal defense teams: with an eye to protecting the boss above all else. At long last, Trump has the attorney general he’s been craving ever since Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation all those years ago: a guy who knows his proper throne-sniffing place.

But somehow even this development didn’t get my blood boiling as much as another, objectively smaller development yesterday: Vice President JD Vance’s turn in the White House Briefing Room defending the settlement fund in questions from reporters. All these guys are rotten, but there’s something about Vance’s shtick of couching his own utterly cynical amorality in a posture of faux-earnest aw-shucks folksy reasonableness that bothers me even more than the no-pretense in-your-face corruption.

You’d never see Trump, for instance, managing to formulate this sort of soullessly galaxy-brained thought about the J6ers: “One of the interesting things about the American media is there is a fascination with prisoner rights. . . . You know who never gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to disproportionate sentencing? People who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6th protest.”

Incredibly, Vance repeatedly declined to rule out the possibility of giving “anti-weaponization” money to people convicted of violent attacks on Capitol Police.

“You previously told me that anyone who assaulted a police officer on January 6th should go to prison,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the vice president. “So why not rule out giving them taxpayer-funded money?”

“What I said,” Vance replied, “is we’re going to look at everything case by case. . . . There are people who, I don’t know their individual circumstances, and I don’t rule things out categorically when I know nothing about a person’s individual circumstances.”

“We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers—that doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely ignore some of the claims they’re going to make,” Vance said at another point. “We’re going to evaluate these things on a case-by-case basis.”

This posture is so tiresome. Here is something we know categorically about the “individual circumstances” of those who assaulted police officers on January 6th: They all assaulted police officers on January 6th. Vance, an educated human being with a sharp mind capable of abstract thought, is not actually having genus–species difficulties here. Rather, he is compelled to squirm and gyrate like this because he doesn’t want to say the obvious actual reason why Trump doesn’t want him to rule out money for violent rioters. This has nothing to do with invented or imagined ameliorating circumstances. Trump, as he has made clear all along, simply thinks attacking police on his behalf is behavior that should be rewarded, not punished.

This was clear on the day of January 6th itself, when Trump had to be dragooned by those around him into denouncing the violence at all—which he finally did in the most laughably perfunctory way imaginable. As the dust settled on the wreckage of the riot, Trump was openly exultant: “Go home with love & in peace,” he tweeted that night. “Remember this day forever!” It was clear again last year when Trump pardoned every January 6th criminal—the violent included—on his first day back in office. It would have been easy for the president simply to pardon everyone who stormed the Capitol nonviolently (lol) on his behalf.

He pardoned them all because he approved of what all of them had done. Now he plans to pay them with your money, too. And the vice president has the temerity to wag an admonishing finger at you for caring.