President Donald Trump has reportedly demanded that his Justice Department pay him $230 million in taxpayer dollars as compensation for past actions that he disagreed with.
Trump submitted claims to the Justice Department beginning in 2023, alleging that his rights were violated by investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, The New York Times reported Tuesday. A complaint submitted last year accused the Department of Justice of privacy violations that occurred during an FBI search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.
Ethics experts said the situation was unparalleled in U.S. history because many people tasked with approving the payments were Trump's personal lawyers and supporters, whom he installed at the Justice Department after being re-elected.
"What a travesty," Pace University ethics professor Bennett L. Gershman told the Times. "The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don't need a law professor to explain it."
"And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him, deciding whether he wins or loses. It's bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe."
Trump seemed to acknowledge that he had asked the Justice Department to pay him during an Oval Office event with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president's former criminal attorney.
"I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president. I said, I'm sort of suing myself. I don't know, how do you settle the lawsuit?? I'll say give me X dollars, and I don't know what to do with the lawsuit," Trump said at the time. "It sort of looks bad, I'm suing myself, right? So I don't know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful."
Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin declined to say whether Blanche would recuse himself from approving payments to Trump.
"In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials," Gilmartin said.
