“This administration is dripping with corruption from top to bottom, but rushing a settlement to steal $1.7 billion taxpayer dollars for a slush fund before a judge can toss your junk lawsuit would be among the most corrupt acts in American political history. This lawsuit has never been anything more than a shakedown of the American people by a crook president and his crook lawyers.”

— Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), quoted by CNBC, on the reported settlement proposal the Justice Department has with President Trump for his lawsuit against the IRS.

Garrett Graff: “The IRS, which remember reports to the President, and Donald Trump, who remember IS the president, are in talks to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the agency.”

“The result on the table right now, somehow, seems even more corrupt than I could have originally imagined: Trump is negotiating dropping the lawsuit in exchange for the agency ending its various audits of Trump and his companies, as well as what ABC News says is the ‘creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration…'”

“This is Donald Trump basically getting the federal government to use your tax dollars to pay off the foot soldiers in his army who tried to overthrow the US government and peaceful transition of power on January 6th, as well as rewrite the history of a whole number of righteous and real prosecutions and investigations of criminals associated with the Trump administration.”

“In addition to being corrupt, it also appears that the proposed settlement is actually illegal.”

New York Times: “When President Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, his delegation included a trio of top cabinet officials, more than a dozen corporate executives — and his middle son, Eric Trump.”

“While he is not a member of his father’s administration — nor the head of a corporate behemoth with business in China — Eric Trump does lead the Trump family business. And the company, known as the Trump Organization, has flirted with Chinese business deals over the years, raising the question of whether his presence could blur the lines between government business and private enterprise.”

“A Minnesota state lawmaker is asking a powerful House committee to subpoena US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into her possible ties to Somali fraudsters who bilked Twin Cities taxpayers out of $250 million,” the New York Post reports.

“The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation,” the AP reports.

“The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.”

“A shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump has agreed to merge with a critical minerals group that last year secured up to $1.6 billion in US government support to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan,” the Financial Times reports.

“The deal would expand the Trump family’s sprawling business empire, granting the US president’s sons a stake in a company that insiders hope will help sever America’s reliance on China for metals used in munitions and other defense products.”

Associated Press: “Days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was ousted by an opposition campaign with an anti-corruption message, Democrats want to try the same playbook against President Donald Trump before the midterm elections.”

“House Democrats launched Wednesday what they call a task force to overhaul ethics rules and protect access to the ballot. They also want to highlight the Trump family’s business dealings and the president’s transformation of the federal government.”

Bloomberg: “Vulcan Elements, a three-year-old startup, aims to build the largest rare-earth magnet factory in the world outside China…”

“Two important changes bolstered Vulcan’s prospects last year. First, a cadre of venture capital firms invested in the company in August. The group included 1789 Capital, a fund that counts the president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., as a partner. Then, three months later, the US government unveiled a deal backing Vulcan with a loan of more than half a billion dollars.”

Garrett Graff: “We’ve spent so much of the last six months focused on the lived American experience of the supercharged secret police regime of ICE and CBP that we’ve mostly overlooked how much money is flooding into all aspects of border security. Just before Noem stepped down, I wrote a new piece for the New Yorker about the giant procurement budget of Customs and Border Protection. Even as someone who follows all of this closely, I was astounded by what I found digging through the government contracting databases…”

“There’s no way that a government agency can responsibly scale from spending three-billion a year to spending twenty times that — and there’s plenty of reason to doubt that CBP is currently spending that money wisely or in any that will deliver real value for the taxpayer.”

National Review: “White House officials, lawmakers, and government contractors told NR that they have long suspected that Lewandowski and his political allies inside and outside of DHS are financially profiting from DHS contracts and multiple offices and committees on Capitol Hill are actively investigating the matter.”

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) “can’t leave Washington, D.C., to testify in the largest public corruption trial in Ohio history due to the Iran war, the defense attorneys said, but did find time to return to the state to attend a fundraiser,” ABC Cleveland reports.

“Of all the ways President Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive power, one stands out to lawyers and watchdogs,” NPR reports.

“The president wants the government he leads to pay him billions of dollars.”

“Trump has filed multiple claims arguing he’s been hurt by Justice Department investigations and the leak of his tax returns years ago. Now it’s up to his own political appointees to determine whether to settle with their boss — and for how much taxpayer money.”

“Eric Trump is pouring money into a sector that is a growing focus of the Pentagon his father oversees: drones,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The president’s son is investing in the Israeli drone maker Xtend as part of a $1.5 billion deal to take the company public through a merger with a small Florida construction company.”