I wrote a whole thing before I realized the doom for the anti weaponization fund came
over two weeks ago. Plaintiff Trump voluntarily dismissed with prejudice
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72207870/62/trump-v-internal-revenue-service/
The craziest thing about this isn't all the obvious corruption or illegality, we've had a lot of that. It's the lagging tail of recognition. For
weeks the Trump Administration crowed about an anti-weaponization fund, after it was dead, and the Court said it was dead, and that there was no settlement.
For posterity (the whole thing I wrote, unaware of the voluntary dismissal with prejudice):
Although they are refusing to put it in writing, curiously. Maybe they think not doing so will make it a smaller story in the media, or maybe it's just standard lying.
I don't think it's either, this time. I think that the decreasing number of literate members of the Trump administration internally recognized there's no way forward for the fund, that the steps taken to create it were play acting, not issuing meaningful written policy. So when Blanche was asked in the congressional hearing about how he and DoJ had 'signed earlier documents regarding the fund' whether Blanche and DoJ would now 'sign and release documents reversing the DoJ's position on the fund' he balked and gave a generic denial. He was probably already embarrassed about signing a purported settlement in a nonjusticiable case that was only going to work if they had a district judge bless it, which they obviously wouldn't.
The actual answer as to what documents will need to be signed is either (1) nothing, if the district court on its own dismisses
Trump v Big Pile of Taxpayer Money or (2) the parties' motion for voluntary dismissal of it
(2) isn't something that he has approval to do yet, so he can't commit to it at the hearing and it's probably not what the questioner wanted/meant anyway.
Side note: fuck the media for making me watch a video of the hearing instead of providing a transcript. If anyone else wants to indulge:
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So this anti-weaponization fund, as proposed, was a diversion from the feds' appropriated Judgment Fund (it's
uncapped 31 U.S.C. § 1304). That's obviously illegal - the feds can only use the Judgment Fund pursuant to a final court order. Under any reading of the law, they needed the federal district court to bless the "settlement" as resolving the case.
That's not what happened here.
First, lawyers qua Trump filed the case against Trump's administration claiming Trump the individual was harmed by the leak of his tax return and demanded some absurd amount of money from the Treasury as recompense. Soon thereafter, "both" sides said they were settling the lawsuit, Trump the individual would drop his claim in exchange for immunity for Trump and his kids from the IRS and the establishment of the anti-weaponization fund.
The district court essentially balked, and inquired whether it had jurisdiction or if it was just the same people on both sides of the v (it was). I'm not aware if the administration or lawyers qua Trump ever did anything further in that case. I think they acted as if they had done enough, refusing to recognize that there's not a legal, valid settlement (qualifying for the Judgment Fund) without the court's approval.
Naturally the administration was trumpeting the creation of the fund from that point, independently of reality.
Separate individuals sued to enjoin the purported anti weaponization fund and were granted preliminary relief, by a different judge in a different case. That's the pause reported in the media.
The next step in the trojan court case is for the district court to deny that it has jurisdiction and dismiss the case, which it will eventually do on its own if the parties don't move to dismiss it themselves.
Sue-and-settle is a real, shitty thing in so far as it's an end run around the law/Congress/reality. But this was a really half assed pantomime of it. You always need the court to bless a settlement, and the smartest person in the Trump administration in favor of this seems to have mistakenly thought that the district courts' admittedly low standard for settlement approval was far lower.
