Editorial: The most self-dealing president in US history outdoes himself with $230M claim

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Oct 29, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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A great many Americans today wonder, with good reason, whether America’s democracy can survive Donald Trump’s presidency.

Now it’s becoming increasingly clear that another question we should all be asking is whether America can afford Trump’s presidency.

The latest stunt from the most corruptly self-dealing president in U.S. history is astonishing even from him: Trump is suing the Justice Department for $230 million as compensation for the federal investigations into his campaign’s relationship with Russia before his first term and his hoarding of classified documents after that term.

This even as regular Americans are reeling under Trump’s cruel funding cuts and obtuse tariff policies.

Trump’s unprecedented, outlandish bid for personal compensation, as reported last week by The New York Times, stems in part from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election. It’s a foundational myth of the MAGA movement that the investigation was always baseless and that it fully exonerated Trump. Both claims are false.

In fact, Mueller’s probe, while it found no evidence of personal collusion by Trump, established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to Trump’s benefit and that Trump’s campaign eagerly welcomed that interference, doing what they could to leverage it. Multiple Trump insiders were criminally charged for lying about their Russian contact.

As for the classified documents case: There’s no question that Trump improperly squirreled away hundreds of documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, lied about some of what he had, refused multiple attempts by the government to get them back and shared some of the documents with people who had no clearance to see them. It was only Trump’s election to a second presidential term that ultimately ended the prosecution.

The very notion that Trump is entitled to such massive (or any) compensation because he was subjected to two perfectly justified investigations is galling even before you get to the punchline: The ultimate decision on whether to agree to a settlement with Trump will fall to the obedient lickspittles of Trump’s Justice Department — including the lawyer who represented him in the documents case.

Trump, grievance-driven as always, whined last week that he was “damaged very greatly” by the two investigations. That’s nonsense, but even people who truly have been victimized by weaponized federal prosecution (Trump critics James Comey and John Bolton are two current examples) seldom are able to win compensation.

Trump acknowledges it will probably be easier for him. “You know that decision would have to go across my desk,” he said last week, adding, in a rare moment of apparent self-awareness: “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

Actually, it’s not strange at all for this particular president. Self-dealing is nothing new for Trump, who has been blatantly violating the constitutional prohibition on presidential profiteering since practically the first day of his first term.

Whether it’s steering foreign dignitaries to his hotels, hawking cryptocurrency from the Oval Office, cutting real estate deals with countries seeking to influence U.S. policy, or getting similarly motivated top American CEOs to chip in for his vulgar new White House ballroom, Trump always plays all the angles to his own benefit — Emoluments Clauses be damned.

Trump says he will donate any settlement money he gets to charity. How big of him, considering that money will be coming from some of the same taxpayers who are suffering financially under Trump’s policies.

Trump’s spastic and unnecessary tariff wars are driving up American consumer prices. His announced $40 billion bailout for Argentina’s oppressive right-wing government is hurting the same American farmers and ranchers who make up much of his political base. Poor families all over the nation are suffering from cuts to food programs and health care as Trump and his GOP cohorts prioritize welfare for the wealthy.

North St. Louis alone recently lost a $200 million federal grant for a job-creating battery plant for no reason but Trump’s retrograde hostility toward clean energy.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe — fresh from carrying Trump’s water with his congressional district re-gerrymandering scheme— says he will lobby Trump to restore the grant. Good luck with that. As so many who have prostrated themselves for Trump have learned, loyalty is a one-way street with him.

Perhaps Kehoe can gently suggest that Trump’s potential Justice Department settlement alone could more than fund the battery plant to create those St. Louis jobs. Either way, it would be taxpayers footing the bill.

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