Or in other words,
If you can process this whole astounding ethics debacle and come out anything but but disgusted and disillusioned, you apparently are capable of rationalizing anything.
Hint: This is not a good thing.
In this post, I wrote about the gob-smacking, unprecedented settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the leaking of his tax returns. My conclusion yesterday: “[T]his deal stinks, and should be challenged ethically if not legally. The whole Justice Department and the Treasury Department too had irresolvable conflicts, and should not have been allowed to make a settlement with their own boss.”
I learned of this revolting development two days ago, when a Trump Deranged relative asked me why my ethicist head wasn’t exploding over “Trump’s corrupt deal with the IRS that gave him a billion dollars to pay his militia, the J-6 rioters.” I had no idea what she was talking about. See, she only watches MSNow for news, and of course they were all over the story, as were all the Axis news platforms. The last few days I have been less than diligent in my bi-partisan news searches, mostly checking websites. However, that potentially exaggerated description of what two Executive cabinet departments and their employees who Trump can fire at will agreed to in settlement of a lawsuit that almost certainly would have been tossed by any judge who could beat Justice Jackson in Scrabble turned out to be shockingly accurate.
Now we are learning that the deal is even worse than it first appeared to be. This account is straight from Politico. I will not make a habit of the lazy Instapundit-Althouse blogging practice of posting a long quote or article and asking readers, “What do you think?”, but the ethics horror here is pretty straightforward, and I would just be rewording the item unnecessarily:
Ethics Alarms 
Anyone else think this settlement would provide an actual legitimate grounds for impeachment unlike the ones from his previous term?
I do.
And this is where the lawfare against Trump has lead.
If the so-called Resistance (the Democrats and their allies in the news media, et al) had been reasonable in its opposition to Trump, had refrained from hyperbolic discourse, the weaponization of the DOJ and other government organizations, the petty attacks on him and his family, far more people today would recognize when he actually does or says something wrong.
As it is, I ignored the story for a couple of days as it was blowing up over social media since I assumed it was just more left-wing misrepresentation.
Which was completely reasonable on your part. It’s the Chicken Little phenomenon.
How does Trump effectively protect himself after he leaves office when his detractors will use the weight of government to destroy him when they have the chance. How many people in his orbit were bankrupted or coerced into pleas under threat of financial ruin for themselves and/or family members.
I liken this to demanding amnesty for illegals who will reward the elected person with votes. That too is an abuse of power. However, unless you have unimpeachable hard evidence that Blanche was coerced or threatened by Trump then I have a hard time accepting the claim of abuse of office. What Blanche does absent of coercion is more of an indictment of him not Trump.
Trump was the plaintiff and filed the suit prior to his election. Are we to demand that he not seek reparations because he was elected. What stops a future administration and its DOJ from using the full weight and unlimited resources of government to get him and his family once and for all. We know that Speaker Jeffries wants to break him and the spirit of his supporters when they get power.
I don’t think this deal looks good but it may be the only way to stop the weaponization of government against political adversaries. If anyone has a better solution to brings us back to a point that once a president leaves office and is not subject to continued persecution by the party in power I am willing to change my mind.
(1) I believe the part that removes the Trump family from IRS jurisdiction is the correct move. It is extreme, but the IRS has proven over and over again that it cannot treat conservatives fairly. This is the only way to prevent the IRS for being used as a partisan tool against them. I think this needs to be done more, when school districts discriminate against conservatives and when cities harass citizens who criticize them, for example. Extreme, yes, but this might get the system to change and it will protect the innocent.
(2) This is classic sue, then settle. It has been used for decades by Democratic groups, so why is it a problem now? Because it is Trump? Isn’t that partisan? These are the rules now.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/sue-and-settle-tactics-that-circumvent-law-set-a-bad-precedent