In the Trumpian retconning of history, the January 6th insurrection was a “day of love,” and the insurrectionists, who were just visitors touring the Capital, received “unfair” treatment for beating the Capital Police and shitting on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk. The prosecutions of more than 1500 insurrectionists denied them due process, as they were treated like animals in jail. Except nothing about this is remotely true. It’s a MAGA fantasy, a lie regurgitated over and over as if repetition will make it so. Then again, history is written by the victors, and Trump won the 2024 election.

There was outrage following January 6th, when Trump failed to pardon the insurrectionists for doing as he instructed, serving him loyally by trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to save him from the humiliation of losing, a reality Trump vehemently denied and continues to deny in ever more hysterical terms. As far as Trump is concerned, it’s been “conclusively proven” that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite there still not being a shred of evidence all these years later, except in the fevered minds of people who confuse conspiracy for reality.

And the time has come to buy back their love, as Trump may well need a private militia of the terminally deluded as his world devolves into a steaming pile of failure. And Trump, whose skill at scheming is often confused by the faithful with intelligence, has figured out a way to make America pay for it.

The Trump administration is considering the establishment of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate the president’s allies and others investigated by the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., creating an ethical and political minefield for Republicans and the department’s leadership.

Superficially, the simpletons may see this as a better sham than Trump’s pathetic suit for $10 billion for an IRS subcontractor’s employee releasing his tax return. What the Booz Allen employee, Charles Littlejohn, did was wrong, no matter what you think about the propriety of Trump failing to keep his promise about releasing his tax returns like all other recent presidents, and that’s why he’s in prison now. But the suit was crap from the outset, except that Trump is president and Auditioning Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, serves him.

Gifting Trump $10 billion would have been a bridge too far, even for Trump, whose personal and family net worth has grown exponentially since he’s seized control of the American ATM. But what’s Trump’s is Trump, and he’s not reaching into his own pocket to buy his posse, so the suit presented an opportunity for the government to buy it for him, to do so in a way that he, and he alone, like with the sham Board of Peace to which America contributed $1.5 billion and which Trump will control in perpetuity, will divvy up as he sees fit.

The arrangement would be an unprecedented use of taxpayer dollars with little oversight. Under the terms of the potential settlement agreement, President Trump would have the authority to remove members of the commission running the fund without cause, and the commission would be under no obligation to disclose its procedures or decision-making process for awarding more than a billion dollars, the sources said.

Trump’s proposed commission is expected to be composed of five members who would issue monetary awards based on a majority vote, and the process for awarding money and the identities of the recipient could be kept private, according to sources.

Theoretically, the board could give every insurrectionist a million dollars, including those now imprisoned for post-insurrection child sex abuse and trafficking, for example,  which would go a long way in soothing the hurt feelings over being unpardoned after doing Trump’s dirty work. But that seems unlikely, since there are others, say Eric or Don, Jr., who could also lay claim to funds because they haven’t made enough off their Trump memecoin crypto ventures.

Would the creation of this slush fund cause anyone beyond the MAGA faithful to be concerned about the unprecedented graft and corruption? It’s hard to say, given that it’s been done in the open without much by way of hue and cry beyond the usual characters. Notably, there has been almost no pushback against the nonsensical Trump-owned Board of Peace, which has done absolutely nothing since it collected billions from the US and the handful of nations still feeding at Trump’s trough.

As Stalin is reputed to have said, one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic. The same appears to be true for lies and graft. Statistics are boring and nobody cares about them anyway. It’s not as if it’s our money anyway. Once we hand it over to the government, it disappears down a black hole, so what difference does it make whether it goes into a slush fund or pays for the Arc de Trump?