Although the president began his Thursday morning just as he begins a lot of mornings—by watching Fox & Friends and unleashing a delusional tweetstorm about the latest efforts of law enforcement to expose him as a compulsive grifter whose sole purpose in life is accumulating wealth—this time, something was different. Instead of targeting Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump's hypothetical efforts to steal an election and/or obstruct justice, the president went after New York attorney general Barbara Underwood, whose office alleges in a new lawsuit that the president's charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, is in fact a gold-plated crock of shit.

The complaint, which is perhaps not the 72nd birthday gift for which Trump hoped, basically claims that instead of making actual donations to actual charities, the Foundation served as the checking account that his accountants knew to draw upon whenever Trump had reason to pay money to other nonprofit organizations. Foundation funds were used to, among other things, settle his legal disputes, fulfill his grant pledges, facilitate his campaign's donations, and even decorate one of his golf courses with a motel-art portrait of himself. This, as you may be able to intuit, is not how philanthropy works.

The allegation that the Trump family charities are glorified money-laundering schemes that exist mostly so the Trump family can talk about them at cocktail parties is not a new one. What is interesting about this lawsuit, though, is that instead of merely seeking to compel the president to reimburse the Foundation for his illicit withdrawals, the attorney general's office hopes to shut the thing down altogether. (Trump attempted to do this himself two years ago, but state law prevents it from dissolving until the investigations into its various wrongdoings are complete.) The attorney general also wants to ban Trump from the nonprofit arena for ten years, and ban his eldest children—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, each of whom served on the board—for one year apiece for their failure to exercise meaningful oversight over dad's operation. In other words, a fed-up Underwood isn't bothering with trying to fix something that never worked properly in the first place.

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Trump has already vowed that he "won't settle" this case, which is the same thing he said about the Trump University lawsuit—also brought by the New York state attorney general's office—that he then agreed to settle for $25 million in 2016. But even if he were to reconsider, the non-monetary relief sought by the attorney general would make it tough for the president to buy his way out of this legal predicament. Besides, if Trump Foundation reserves are no longer available to cover his incidentals, what money would he use to settle it?