David Gardner writes:

It is a sick joke on America’s history that Donald Trump chose the amount of $1.776 billion to bilk from taxpayers to pay his MAGA friends.

He has already picked a sport with a fragile hold on the rules—UFC—to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary with a cage fight at the White House on June 14.

Now the president is using 1776—the year the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain—to frame an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. Constitution, which has been the nation’s guiding light for 237 of those 250 years.

By forcing through a self-serving settlement in his $10 billion case against the Internal Revenue Service, Trump has dangerously blurred the separation of powers that has governed the United States through 46 presidencies, including his own first term.

The blatancy leaves you breathless, because in Trump’s IRS lawsuit, he was effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant.

And by manipulating the proceedings, he ended up being the judge. [Continue reading…]