Three Judges Bench Slap Trump in One Glorious Day

The birthday boy got a judicial reality check

Trump has been treating the country’s upcoming 250th birthday like his own personal birthday celebration, complete with gaudy gifts to himself, a planned UFC spectacle on the White House lawn, and the usual swampy assumption that public office is just another branch of the Trump branding operation.

Then Friday happened. Three separate federal judges, within a few hours, started tearing into some of the schemes Trump seems to care about most.

MS Now host Chris Hayes did not exactly leave room for ambiguity during his evening program.

He called them “some of his seemingly highest priorities in office” and then twisted the knife with this description:

“These are the things that keep him up at night. These are the things he thinks about, that he plots about, that he talks about to the press and anyone who’s listening.”

Hayes also framed the larger meaning with a line that deserves to be stapled to every chyron: “There is clear evidence of the growing backlash to his profiteering off of his position.”

Translation, the courts are finally treating the obvious like it is obvious.

The Kennedy Center ego trip just got laughed out of court

Trump’s first humiliation of the day involved the Kennedy Center, because apparently it was not enough for John F. Kennedy to have a major cultural institution named after him without Trump trying to elbow his way onto the marquee too.

A federal judge ordered Trump’s name permanently removed from the building. The reason was almost painfully simple: “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name and only Congress can change it.”

Imagine needing a judge to explain that a public building is not a monogrammed bathrobe.

That ruling mattered beyond the obvious comedy value. It was a straight rejection of the idea that Trump can stamp his name onto national institutions by force of ego alone. That is what made the moment so satisfying.

It was not just a legal correction. It was a public reminder that the country is not one of his hotels.

The slush fund scheme looks even nastier in daylight

Trump’s much uglier problem involved a planned “$1.8 billion slush fund to pay the people who helped him try to overthrow an election the last time he lost and, we should say, essentially anyone else that he wants to.”

A federal judge in Virginia halted the fund while lawsuits against Trump’s Justice Department move through the courts. That alone would have been bad enough. Then came Florida.

The federal judge who heard Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS reopened the case to investigate what she called “grievous allegations” that the settlement was “premised on deception and made the court the victim of a fraud.”

She handed down her order after a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges argued the administration might have defrauded the court with the settlement.

Trump’s side now has to file a response to those former judges’ court filing explaining how the slush fund plan is legitimate and showing that the parties were actually adversarial, which, yes, is quite a trick when the underlying complaint is that Trump was effectively bargaining with his own government.

Retired judge Nancy Gertner put it more sharply during a Friday interview on MS Now.

She said the claim “was really not a real claim because it was Donald Trump bargaining with himself,” a situation she also described as “the snake bargaining with himself.”

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The courts are finally calling the bluff

Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told MS Now the day was “monumental” and said the federal judiciary was taking up the constitutional philosophy of “no kings.”

He called Friday “a remarkable day for the rule of law in America” as judges peeled back the layers and found “nothing but a fraud at the heart of it.” Hard to improve on that.

Raskin said Trump’s allies had previously argued in a similar case that no recovery was available, then turned around and agreed Trump should get $10 billion in this one.

His conclusion was brutal. “They weren’t owed $1, much less $10 billion,” he said, arguing the settlement was an attempt to create “this 1.776 billion dollar political slush fund for their friends” while also wiping out potential liability for Trump, his family, and his businesses.

As an amusing footnote, a fourth federal judge ruled the Justice Department could not dismiss the indictments of Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes and others tied to January 6 because it had offered no facts or evidence to justify doing so.

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