Monday was a tough day for President Donald Trump and his coterie of lawyers on both sides of his slush fund deal.
U.S District Judge Kathleen Williams threw out the insurrectionist slush fund, even though acting Attorney General Todd Blanche pinky promised that it was already gone.
This order is bad news for both the slush fund and the various attorneys who colluded to bring this about.
First, it prohibits both parties from “referring to the purported ‘settlement agreement,’ or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a ‘settlement’ reached in this matter.”
This clearly spells the end of the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” but it doesn’t explicitly say that it knocks out the sweet “addendum” that popped up the next day—giving Trump, his family, and his companies unprecedented complete immunity from Internal Revenue Service investigations and audits of tax filings prior to the settlement agreement.
But if the parties can’t refer to a “settlement” in any setting, it sure looks like the IRS gift to Trump is out along with the slush fund, especially since there’s already a statute prohibiting Trump from asking for or promoting any termination of an IRS investigation.
This whole situation was genuinely unprecedented, with Williams reopening the case at the request of some non-parties when it became clear that Trump and the Justice Department had committed fraud.
In that circumstance, a judge’s jurisdiction over a case continues even after a voluntary dismissal by the parties. Here, that voluntary dismissal was cooked up to avoid having to explain to Williams how they were totally adverse parties—because they knew that would be impossible.
One of the ways in which it was clear that the parties were never adverse, Williams notes, is that “settlements between genuinely adverse parties, by definition, cannot be repudiated by just one side.”
That makes sense, as it kind of defeats the whole “settlement” thing if one party can just back out for no reason. But in this case, Blanche unilaterally declared that the slush fund was gone, which Williams pointed out “demonstrates his confidence that he could speak for, and bind, both sides of this matter.”
On top of trashing the slush fund deal, Williams’ order might be the first to detail the many conflicts of Trump’s various lawyers.
First, the attorney who signed the settlement agreement on behalf of the ostensibly private Trump plaintiffs, Daniel Epstein, was “former White House Senior Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President Trump from 2017 until 2020.”
Next, the agreement was signed on behalf of the government defendants by Stanley Woodward Jr., the current associate attorney general at the DOJ. That’s a problem because “before he went to the DOJ, Associate Attorney General Woodward represented several individuals charged in connection with the events of January 6, 2021.”
And let’s not forget Blanche, who “before his appointment to the DOJ, Acting Attorney General Blanche served as President Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney in several high-profile matters.”
Another problem is that Trump just prevailed at the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter, which was based on the argument that Trump gets to control every last thing in the executive branch.
Williams put this so simply that even Trump’s lawyers will get it: “Plaintiffs cannot argue before the Supreme Court that Executive Branch actors ‘unquestionably exercise’ executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive, and then here, argue that the Parties are sufficiently adverse to establish an actual case or controversy.”
Now, how about those sanctions?
One of Trump’s personal attorneys, Alejandro Brito, who also handles all of Trump’s fake lawsuits against the media, was referred to the Florida Bar for disciplinary proceedings. Epstein is barred from appearing pro hac vice—where an attorney not barred in the jurisdiction asks the court to let them represent a client in conjunction with a local barred attorney—in any court in the Southern District of Florida for a year.
Fam, is it good when the incoming interim dean ofFlorida International University’s law school is barred from representing anyone in one of Florida?s federal jurisdictions?
So what about Blanche and Woodward?
Well, Williams didn’t need to refer them to their respective bars because they both already have existing bar complaints. Instead, she ordered that copies of her decision be sent to those bars for their consideration.
Kind of a bad world where the highest-level attorneys in the DOJ already have bar complaints, so it’s not necessary to open another one.
And, of course, Blanche was already eviscerated by a different court in a different case for his vindictive prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Meanwhile, an entirely different case before Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia had already blocked any payouts from the slush fund.
Trump’s house of cards is crumbling mightily. Goodbye, slush fund. Good riddance, sleazy IRS deal. And good luck, Trump attorneys—you’re gonna need it.
Lisa Needham
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