The objection here is not to using any legal mechanism to retrieve an “improper” payment. Of course it is, to say the least, very open to question that the Trump administration accurately identifies improper payments rather than disfavored payments. The objection informed observers have is to improperly using the payments system to recover payments which were settled because they contradict the current administration’s policies. The Trump administration’s, and Elon Musk’s, repeated misrepresentation and expanded definitions of “improper payments” fundamentally obscure this crucial distinction.
One of the reasons this story has been so difficult to report and has taken as long as it has is that it has been extremely difficult to find sources willing to be quoted, or really even vaguely characterized. To understand why, think of this topic from the point of view of a financial or payment expert (whether among lawyers or in other fields). Imagine you were such a person and you believed that the Trump administration was in the process of successfully claiming for itself the power to arbitrarily reverse any government payment or even, in the worst case scenarios, arbitrarily confiscate the funds in any person’s bank account without due process of law. Would you be willing to risk being targeted for giving a quote saying so publicly? Even anonymously? I have not found a source familiar with the situation who is even willing to have their views characterized and cited as from a “Government employee from an undisclosed level of government or a banker at a major financial institution.”
I have never encountered the kind of alarm and panic regarding personal safety that I have in reporting this story.
The pattern across my previous reporting, my current reporting, the reporting of others and this late-breaking FBI-EPA-Citibank situation suggest that the Trump administration is testing the waters in order to gain far greater control of the United States entire payments infrastructure- control great enough to bend Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s enemies to their will at a speed far faster than courts could ever conceivably contain. We are entering waters beyond the scale of constitutional crises and nearly every expert in this shallow pool feels ill-equipped to speak about it publicly for a variety of reasons. I’m having trouble imagining circumstances more dangerous.
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