There are several weird aspects to the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" established by President Donald Trump's settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS. Perhaps most puzzling of all, the amount of taxpayer money allocated to the compensation fund, $1.776 billion, is plainly arbitrary, which is consistent with the mysterious math that Trump has deployed in his long history of frivolous litigation.
The lawsuit that provided the pretext for this arrangement, which was provoked by an IRS contractor's illegal leaking of Trump's tax returns, pitted the president against two agencies he oversees: the IRS and the Treasury Department. Those defendants were represented by a Justice Department that Trump has not hesitated to use in pursuit of his personal vendettas. That strange situation prompted a federal judge to question whether the case featured a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as would have been required for the lawsuit to proceed.
