Shelby Talcott

Yeah, so this all started back in January when the president filed a lawsuit against the IRS.

He was seeking, I think it was $10 billion in damages over the disclosure of his tax returns.

He had also filed a few other claims.

And so this was essentially the culmination of that because the Justice Department decided, well, we don't really want to defend the government.

So instead, we're going to work with the president's

personal lawyers to sort of come to an agreement.

And this slush fund, if you will, was the culmination of those lawsuits and what came from those conversations.

Well, I think that he decided that this deal where, you know, you have a huge amount of money that is going to go to people who argue that they've been, you know, politically persecuted by the government is a good deal.

Because remember, that is exactly what he believes as well.

After he lost the 2020 election, he had a number of lawsuits.

He has not stopped talking since then that those were persecutions by the prior administration.

So for him, this sort of agreement is personal in a way, I think.

It was essentially taxpayer funded fund.

And it was supposed to come from this account that was going to be overseen by a board of five people.

This board of five people were going to decide who had been politically persecuted by the government.

And then there would be payouts.

Yeah, so I think it was the idea of his legal team, of everybody involved.

The president obviously signed off on it.

But it was a really unusual situation because, as you said, there were not really many guardrails about who could theoretically benefit from this fund.

And they wouldn't necessarily rule that out.