Ben Shapiro says Trump’s $230 million payout from Justice Department ‘riddled with conflicts of interest’
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Saturday criticized President Trump’s efforts to obtain $230 million from the Justice Department in compensation for various federal investigations into his conduct.
“I think it’s full of conflicts of interest,” Shapiro told NewsNation’s Batya Ungar Sarjun.
He added: “I can’t see a world where a massive number of lawsuits or even impeachment don’t end up in the House. That’s just a bad strategy.”
Trump claimed that previous Justice Department investigations into his conduct were “politically motivated” and damaged his reputation.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, will be one of the people responsible for signing the settlement, which the president said he would donate to charity.
“Pretending that it’s not a conflict of interest, for the president to ask the Department of Justice that he appointed to perhaps sign off on a check for $230 million for him, even if it’s going to go to charity, that clearly raises a significant conflict of interest that I think would be impossible to get around in any legal context,” Shapiro said.
GOP senators and other lawmakers have also raised significant concerns about the effort.
“This is terrible timing, to say the least, given that we are in a lockdown,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-R) told reporters earlier this week.
He added: “I have a lot of concerns about optics, and I don’t know if there’s a precedent for that. There doesn’t seem to be a precedent.”
He also urged Justice Department officials to “follow the rules” when it comes to agreeing to hand over any money to Trump.
“If there is a precedent, this is the beginning of the discussion,” Tillis said later Thursday. “If there’s no precedent for this kind of thing, I don’t think this is the time to establish it.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also said the effort appears “very erratic.”
House Democrats said they plan to investigate Trump’s push for reparations, calling it a “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional effort to steal $230 million from the American people.”
Reps. Jamie Raskin (Maryland) and Robert Garcia (Calif.), the top Democrats on the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Government Reform committees, wrote a letter to the president highlighting the bad timing of Trump’s push for a $230 million settlement.
“You waited until you were President and appointed your hand-picked loyalists to the Department of Justice, knowing that you could direct them to secretly co-sign your demand notes behind closed doors, and then you could deliver the notes to the US Treasury for cold hard cash courtesy of American taxpayers,” the lawmakers wrote.
They added: “This is not justice, this is theft.”
