Judge Tosses Trump Slush Fund

Non-Supreme Court judges continue to hold the line against the president’s corruption. On Monday, one of them, US District Court Judge Kathleen Williams, nullified the “settlement” that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) reached with Donald Trump’s IRS on behalf of Donald Trump.

The president had brought a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in January of this year because, during his first term, a contractor leaked his tax returns. That suit was “settled” in May when the parties “negotiated” a “deal” that would establish a $1.8 billion fund to reward allies of the president who committed crimes on his behalf, such as the individuals who stormed Congress on January 6, 2021, and would preclude Trump, his family, and his businesses from being audited for any tax returns they had already filed.

“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process,” Williams, an appointee of Barack Obama, wrote in her scathing ruling. “This was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”

She added that it was “obvious” that the lawsuit was non-adversarial, i.e., that all parties wanted the same outcome.

“The court declines to adopt or accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump’s current job title from an understanding of what happened here,” Williams added. “The Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.”

Therefore, she wrote, the court “finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”

Williams ruled that the parties are prohibited from referring to their settlement or citing any of its provisions in any official proceedings. In effect, this means that Trump could not point to it to void an audit or an IRS enforcement action (although the thought of this IRS going after him for cheating on his taxes is as unlikely as the president acknowledging that he lost the 2020 election).

But that’s not all.

Williams also believes that some of the lawyers involved in this charade ought to be sanctioned, including Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and Trump’s former personal lawyer. A copy of her ruling will be sent to the state bar of New York, where he is a member, for potential disciplinary actions.

Blanche will testify before the Senate this week ahead of his possible confirmation to become attorney general permanently.

In a world in which the nation’s top lawyer would have to be competent and ethical, his participation in this scheme would be disqualifying. However, since only loyalty matters to Trump, and by extension to the GOP, it seems likely that he will be confirmed.