Trump says he’ll donate $10 billion from his IRS lawsuit to charity. Americans shouldn’t buy it.

This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 5 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

Donald Trump is ordering his subordinates to give him your money. Let me explain.

Scott Bessent has two jobs. He is simultaneously serving as Trump’s treasury secretary and as the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

That means that when Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department last week for $10 billion — accusing the agency of failing to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns to the press during his first administration — the president was effectively asking Bessent, his direct subordinate, to give him billions of dollars.

On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona held Bessent’s feet to the fire during a hearing on Capitol Hill, questioning the treasury secretary over where exactly he would take that $10 billion from to give to his boss.

Trump wants $10 billion of taxpayer money, and he is just asking his subordinates to give it to him.

Bessent was forced to admit that money would be taken from the agency’s general account, meaning U.S taxpayers would be footing the bill.

That’s right. Trump wants $10 billion of taxpayer money, and he is just asking his subordinates to give it to him.

But Bessent ultimately passed the buck on to Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying that because the Justice Department is the defendant in the case, this was really more of a question for her.

Now set aside that, historically, attorneys general have been expected to operate with some level of independence. Trump shattered that norm quite some time ago, so it’s fair to say Bondi operates as Trump’s direct subordinate, too.

Trump is essentially her boss — at least that’s how he sees it — and he is telling her to pay him $10 billion of your money.

During an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Trump was asked explicitly whether he was going to tell Bessent and Bondi to pay him. The president told Tom Llamas he would “tell them to pay me,” but said he would give “100% of the money to charity,” adding he didn’t “want any of that money.”

So, as Trump tells it, he is going to order Bessent and Bondi, his direct subordinates, to pay him $10 billion of your money, but also, you shouldn’t worry about that because he is going to give all of that money to charity.

Now this is sort of a “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” scenario, because Trump has been caught lying — saying he was going to donate to charity and then not — many, many times before.

For example, when Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign, he claimed he had given more than $102 million to charity in the previous five years. His campaign released a 93-page list detailing all of those donations.

But there was one problem: It turns out not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

At the time, The Washington Post dug into Trump’s finances and found that in the 15 years before he ran for office, he had publicly promised to donate more than $8.5 million to one charity or another. But in reality, he had donated only about $2.8 million — and all through his personal charity, the Trump Foundation.

That’s the foundation he ultimately had to dissolve and pay a $2 million settlement over because he had misused the funds, doing things such as buying not one, not two, but three portraits of himself with foundation money. There’s also the time he used the charity’s money to buy himself a signed Tim Tebow football helmet.

Or the time he used the foundation’s money to make a donation to then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, while she was actively considering whether to investigate fraud allegations into Trump University.  (I should note she ultimately decided not to pursue that case.)

It’s worth repeating that Bondi is now the person Trump is asking to give him $10 billion of your money.

Trump got rid of more than 20% of the IRS’ staff last year. That does not sound like an agency that is going to catch a lot of fraud.

Now, if you don’t trust that Trump will actually give that money to charity, during that same interview on Wednesday, he laid out a whole new justification for why he should have your tax money.

The president touted the IRS’ investigation into fraud in Minnesota, claiming that “if we captured 50% of the fraud of this country right now, we would have better than a balanced budget.”

So, according to Trump, Americans shouldn’t worry about that $10 billion because his administration will make up for it by catching fraudsters and balancing the budget. That is the new line of logic here.

But, on Wednesday, Government Executive reported that the IRS has started pulling people from human resources to process tax returns because Trump got rid of more than 20% of the agency’s staff last year. That does not sound like an agency that is going to catch a lot of fraud. In fact, it sounds like one that would miss a lot of it.

Then there is the specific case the president mentioned, the fraud investigation in Minnesota, which he has used to justify his immigration crackdown in the state.

This week, we got the news that the four prosecutors who led that fraud case for the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office have all quit — part of a wave of resignations that has followed the Trump administration’s operation in the state.

Sources inside that office told CBS News that the departures have left the office with as few as 17 assistant U.S. attorneys, down from 70.

But the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown isn’t just making prosecutors leave; it also is overwhelming the prosecutors who stay.

Last week, the top prosecutor in Minnesota, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, said in a court filing that his short-staffed office has been abandoning “pressing and important priorities” to manage the flood of immigration cases they are getting.

That does not sound like an office that is going to catch a lot of fraud.

So, Trump is saying all this money will go to charity, he is saying he will stop so much fraud that you won’t even notice this money disappearing and he is telling you not to worry about how he is trying to pocket $10 billion of your money.

To state the obvious: Don’t listen to him.

Allison Detzel contributed.