U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference at a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) denounced President Donald Trump’s demands that the Justice Department pay him $230 million stemming from federal actions against him, and a legal expert tells The New Republic's podcast host Greg Sargent that Raskin's harsh takedown reveals MAGA's "dark new aim."

According to the New Republic, Raskin's "forceful indictment of Trump's corruption and criminality" condemned the president's “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional effort to steal $230 million from the American people” and his “outrageous and shocking” effort to “shake down” the Treasury,

Leah Litman, author of "Lawless," a book on the Supreme Court, says "There's no way he should be able to get away with this because it is bonkers."

Litman explains there is a background legal principle known as the Federal Tort Claims Act that says the federal government is immune unless they have consent to being sued. The 1946 law allows individuals to sue the federal government for personal injury, property damage or death caused by the negligent or wrongful acts of a federal employee acting within the scope of their duties.

To file a claim, you must first submit an administrative claim to the relevant government agency and provide evidence of the incident, such as medical records or repair receipts. After the agency investigates, they will either offer a settlement or deny the claim. If denied, you have the option to file a lawsuit in federal court.

This process, Litman says, is what Trump began in 2023 and 2024 by "writing this demand letter to the Department of Justice," she says.

Trump, she says, "is just saying that as president, my justice department should actually just fulfill the claim to me."

"I mean, it's obscene on so many levels," she adds.

The federal government, Litman says, "is not usually in the business of handing out several hundreds of millions of dollars to people who have alleged their rights have been violated by the federal government. Suing the federal government is one of the most difficult tasks you can do."

Trump, she says "seems to want to bypass" all of the procedural obstacles involved and wants them to just "hand over the money."

That money, she says, belongs to to the taxpayer, "and watching this guy demolish the White House which he doesn't own to construct a ballroom that he is demanding private citizens and corporations pay for at the same time he is firmly demanding several hundreds of millions of dollars in addition money is grotesque."

Litman says that as Trump and his family "have been trying to profit off the presidency" — and this is just the latest grift.

"This just looks like they have decided, 'why even bother to do it through an intermediary, why not just straight up demand they pay me the money?'"

Raskin in his letter described this "scheme" as "blatantly illegal and unconstitutional," and Litman agrees, calling it a "shocking attempt to shake down the American people."

"[He's] treating the Treasury and treating all of our money as his personal piggy bank," she says.

Raskin says Trump's demand is based on baseless claims — that charges of Russian interference in the 2016 elections were false and that his rights were violated by the raid on Mar-a-Lago — and notes Trump waited to move forward with this demand until he installed his personal lawyers and loyalists.

Litman says that Trump knows exactly what he's doing and he just doesn't care.

"Donald Trump, who has zero inclination for any ethical guidelines, even he seems to get that it's weird that he would be in a position to have his cronies who he installed, who he controls, in a position to decide whether he will get that several hundred millions of dollars," she says.

Also in Raskin's letter is a demand to turn over all internal communications between Trump and his lawyers and DOJ officials discussing Trump's effort to "get his hands on this booty," Sargent says.

"I mean, for all we know they're having a great laugh about this over Signal or in their Truth Social DMs," Litman says. "So even putting aside the blatant conflict of interest and corruption, the idea that your cronies and lackeys would approve this deal that they have no authority to even make under federal law," she writes, is laughable.

Sargent and Litman point to the Supreme Court, saying it has "landed us in this situation," allowing the president to cite his exercise of "official duties ... for corrupt ends."

Litman says the "shocking" immunity decision invoked in the president's demand to the DOJ contributes directly to Trump's corruption.

"It doesn’t matter if the president is exercising those powers for corrupt ends, for sham investigations, or here, maybe for baseless legal claims that again are riddled with conflicts of interest and corruption," she says.

All this, she says, reveals MAGA's darkest desires.

" I think this also reveals something very dark about the MAGA movement more broadly, which is that MAGA thinks all of this is good. It’s not like you could go to the MAGA movement and say, hey, look, he promised to drain the swamp, and now look, he is the swamp. He’s enriching himself at your expense — taxpayers, MAGA taxpayers," she says.

"They think if Trump succeeds, they’re succeeding because it gets you and me angry. Basically, what this really gets at is Trump is kind of reinventing the presidency as a bribe delivery system."

Sargent agrees, saying, "It’s almost like the authoritarian regime is figuring out a way to sort of self enforce loyalty to it, or to him."