One of Donald Trump’s most loyal defenders is wincing at the outrageous $1.8 billion settlement the president just landed by effectively suing himself.
“All of this makes me a little uncomfortable because it’s a lot of money, and it didn’t go through the U.S. Congress,” Scott Jennings told his fellow CNN panelists Monday night.
“That’s number one,” he went on. “Number two, I don’t want to see a president necessarily handpicking people to get payments where he could be accused of just picking people out who are political allies.”
Jennings’ somewhat late awakening to potential conflicts of interest under Trump comes as his settlement agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, announced on Monday, prompts a major backlash.
Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion in January, alleging the agency failed to prevent a former contractor from leaking his tax returns to the New York Times in 2020. The IRS was under Trump’s control as president at the time of the leak, as it has been since he brought the suit.
That historically unprecedented action created something of a legal conundrum for an administration tasked with effectively defending itself from itself. The off-ramp has proven just as novel, with the Justice Department now agreeing to put together a $1.776 billion fund to pay MAGA allies who claim prosecutors unjustly targeted them under the Biden administration.
Appointing the commission that determines the recipients of those payments will fall to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney.
Jennings expressed concern Monday night that this could potentially allow people who were previously convicted of egregious crimes during the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill, including those who assaulted law enforcement officials, to receive handsome payouts from the second Trump administration.
“My personal view is that anybody who committed documented violence against the government or against police officers has not been unfairly treated if they ended up being convicted of a crime because of the violence they committed,” Jennings told CNN.
“I got no real sympathy for them,” he said.
Trump has pardoned thousands of participants in those riots, some of whom have gone on to reoffend.
