Trump’s Slush Fund Is Worse Than You Think
Sources
Full settlement agreement: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441201/dl?inline
Blanche Memo: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441086/dl?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
Blanche Addendum: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1441216/dl
Buettner, Russ. “With Trump’s Deal, a Possible $100 Million I.R.S. Penalty Melts Away.” U.S. The New York Times, May 19, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-settlement-irs.html.
Chait, Jonathan. “Trump’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Is Worse Than Stealing.” The Atlantic, May 19, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/trump-anti-weaponization-fund-january-6/687215/.
Editorial Board. “Opinion | Trump’s $1.776 Billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund.’” Opinion. Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2026. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-settlement-fund-doj-irs-todd-blanche-8b1c4303.
Faulders. “Trump Poised to Drop IRS Suit, Launch $1.7B ‘weaponization’ Fund for Allies: Sources.” ABC7 Los Angeles, May 14, 2026. https://abc7.com/post/trump-poised-drop-irs-suit-launch-17b-weaponization-fund-allies-sources/19101941/.
Feuer, Alan, Andrew Duehren, and Glenn Thrush. “I.R.S. to Drop Audits of Trump and Family.” U.S. The New York Times, May 19, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-irs-doj-lawsuit-audit.html.
Gottsegen, Will. “Heads, Trump Wins.” The Atlantic, May 19, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/05/trump-corruption-irs-fund/687227/.
Honl-Stuenkel, Linnaea, Sophia Barriga Hernandez, and Alyssa Meiman. “At Least 33 Pardoned Insurrectionists Face Other Criminal Charges—but Many Are Now Going Free.” CREW | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, December 18, 2025. https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/at-least-33-pardoned-insurrectionists-face-other-criminal-charges-but-many-are-now-going-free/.
“House Democrats’ Litigation Task Force Fights to Block Trump’s Self-Dealing Settlement in Sham $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit | U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrats.” May 18, 2026. http://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/house-democrats-litigation-task-force-fights-to-block-trump-s-self-dealing-settlement-in-sham-10-billion-irs-lawsuit.
Power, John. “US President Trump, Family Granted Immunity from Pending Tax Audits.” Al Jazeera. Accessed May 20, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/20/us-president-trump-and-family-given-immunity-from-pending-tax-audits.
Roebuck, Jeremy. “Trump Legal Deal Draws Bipartisan Scrutiny as It Expands to End IRS Audits.” The Washington Post, May 19, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/05/19/blanche-faces-capitol-hill-grilling-18b-anti-weaponization-fund/.
Transcript
Hi it’s Wednesday, May 20th, 2026, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend, Leeja Miller. On Monday, the Trump administration and the IRS announced a settlement of the lawsuit Trump, his family, and his businesses had brought against the IRS, asking for $10 billion dollars in damages due to a leak of Trump’s tax returns back in 2020. The 9 page settlement agreement created a nearly 2 billion dollar slush fund and a 5 member panel hand-picked by the president’s personal lawyer Todd Blanche, who also happens to be heading the DOJ at the moment. That panel will then be able to secretly award money from that tax-payer funded slush fund to anyone they want who applies for compensation for being victims of “lawfare” and the weaponization of the DOJ under Biden. Everyone obviously immediately understood that to mean the people who were prosecuted for their illegal activity in relation to the January 6th insurrection, as well as many of Trump's allies and lackeys who have faced prosecution for their own illegal activities over the years. James Comey has said he might apply for compensation because of all of the bogus charges the Trump DOJ has brought against him over the last year, but we all know that he’s not who this taxpayer-funded slush fund is for. This settlement and the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is something that every American needs to be paying close attention to because it represents a level of unprecedented self dealing by the President of the United States at such an astronomical scale that its truly breathtaking in its audacity. And we’re the ones who are paying for it. Today we’re breaking down what the fuck is going on and why Trump’s new slush fund for all his loyalists is completely beyond the pale.
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Okay let’s back it up, here’s what’s going on: back in January of this year, Trump and his family sued the IRS for the “leak” of their tax returns. I put “leak” in air quotes because yes technically it was a leak–a government contractor named Charles Littlejohn stole tax documents from the IRS and released them publicly without permission. He was found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in prison back in 2024. But the injustice Trump allegedly faced in this disclosure was nothing more egregious than what every major presidential candidate for DECADES has voluntarily disclosed in their tax returns. But instead of being forthcoming with the American people about his finances, which he absolutely should because if you want to hold that level of power it absolutely must come with a level of sacrifice of your personal privacy. If you want to be a private individual and have no one want to know stuff about your personal finances to understand your potential conflicts of interest, then you should not volunteer to be President of the United States. Instead he’s claiming he was harmed by this disclosure and was asking for $10 BILLION DOLLARS in compensation, which would of course be paid for by US taxpayers to the President of the United States. The lawsuit on its own was so blatantly corrupt that even when it was first filed Trump was like yeah this is pretty wild. [insert clip]
And just to really drive home the point. The IRS is part of the treasury department and is ultimately controlled by the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and Scott Bessent serves at the pleasure and direction of Donald Trump. The IRS is part of the executive branch. The DOJ is supposed to be independent but its last AG Pam Bondi said it worked for Donald Trump, Blanche literally worked for Donald Trump as his personal attorney, and the DOJ is technically under the executive branch. Not only that but Todd Blanche worked as Trump’s personal attorney on the Mar a Lago documents case that was also part of the settlement agreement that created the slush fund. So it’s Trump suing the Trump administration and the Trump administration agreeing to a settlement with Trump. Just so we’re clear on the level of self dealing here.
So on Monday, Trump and Trump’s Trump-controlled IRS together agreed to settle the lawsuit with Trump and the Trump family. Trump agreed to drop his charges. But of course he has to get something in return. So in exchange for Trump dropping his claims against the IRS related to the leak of his tax documents AS WELL AS his claims against the US related to the investigation into his collusion with Russia during the 2016 election and the search of his Mar a Lago compound for classified documents that he did indeed possess there, in exchange for dropping all of his claims related to all those issues, the DOJ will create a $1.8 billion dollar slush fund. Well, actually, its total value would be $1.776 billion to be exact. Get it. 1776. America. Todd Blanche’s memo supporting the creation of this slush fund says that number is based on quote “the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.” Right right and it just HAPPENS to start with 1776 on our 250th anniversary year that Trump is maniacally obsessed with right. Like I’m sorry but that right there is the Attorney General of the United States lying to us in writing. They picked 1776 for symbolic reasons, not based on the “projected valuation of future claimants’ claims.” And I’m sure the men who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 would absolutely be on board with whatever the fuck is happening in America today. A president stealing almost $2 billion dollars of taxpayer money to pay a group of people who attempted to storm the capitol and subvert the will of Congress and murder sitting legislators. Sounds right.
The funds will be coming from the Judgment Fund which is a permanent appropriation that the federal government uses to pay out court judgments and settlements against the US. So you sue the US, you win monetary damages, you get paid out of that fund. Conveniently, the special “anti-weaponization” fund will only exist during this Trump term, and will get dissolved on December 15, 2028.
And again, just to drive home the point of how blatant this self dealing is, the judge on the Trump v. IRS lawsuit wasn’t even sure she could hear the case. The parties in a lawsuit have to be what’s called “sufficiently diverse.” Meaning that you can’t sue yourself. I can’t remember off the top of my head but I’m pretty sure that’s some day one of law school stuff. You can’t sue yourself and then settle your lawsuit with yourself, and you certainly can’t then make someone else pay for the settlement you made with yourself. Unless, apparently, you’re the president of the united states. And so the judge is like I’m not sure this isn’t just you suing yourself here. She didn’t rule either way, she just said there’s a question of law there and asked the parties to brief her on the issue. The hearing to try to answer that question was scheduled for next week. And what do you know, they announce this settlement just in time. So instead of engaging with the legal process at all, the parties agreed to settle. Which is such a perverse use of the legal system. Self dealing by bringing a lawsuit so you can settle said lawsuit without actually engaging in the law at all, it’s just a pretense for a settlement and an exchange of money, period. And Blanche is claiming there is no reason the judge should need to approve this settlement, and there should be no judicial oversight at all.
Per the terms of the agreement, Blanche as the sitting Attorney General picks 5 people to be on the commission overseeing the slush fund, so you know that means Trump is actually the one doing the choosing, and then, per the terms of the agreement, Trump can fire any of them whenever he wants. So it’s a nearly 2 billion dollar slush fund of our taxpayer money and Trump has ultimate control over who gets the money. There is zero assurance of transparency into how the commission deliberates, how they award monetary damages, how they choose who to award money to, it’s just unfettered access to almost $2 billion of OUR dollars so pay out, likely, the people who attempted to overthrow our government on January 6, 2021.
And just as one small example of the absolute fucking mockery that Todd Blanche is making of the federal judicial system, in the memo attempting to back up this whole slush fund with bogus legal arguments, Blanche points to precedent from the Obama era in which the Judgment Fund was tapped to pay out settlement to Native American farmers who had been denied access to federal loans. However that case, Keepseagle v. Vilsack, was related to Native American farmers unaffiliated with the Obama administration seeking redress for improper behavior by the Department of Agriculture. It wasn’t Obama suing the Department of Agriculture and then making a slush fund available to his allies. The case at issue is literally called Trump vs. the IRS. But this is a pattern we see over and over and over again in this administration which is the use of just enough legalese that anyone who is interested in looking the other way and taking these people at their word might have just enough plausible deniability to say well look, their own memo says there’s precedent here. But if you dig even one layer below the surface, you don’t need a law degree to understand that the case he’s pointing to to justify this slush fund is not on point it’s not even in the same realm of the point it has in fact nothing to do with the point it does not support Blanche’s argument in any way shape or form because this Obama era case is so unrelated to Trump v. IRS that this legal argument wouldn’t pass muster in a first semester law class. It is willfully disregarding the law and facts and it’s not because Todd Blanche is an idiot, he’s practiced law for a while, he allegedly passed his bar exam, he knows this case doesn’t support his argument he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. And these are the types of people who are running our government right now. And I know we know that and I know these people have so normalized doing things beyond the pale that it feels like overkill to be up in arms every time they lie or engage in willfully negligent legal practices, but I do think it matters and I do think it’s important to be incensed every time it happens and to call it out for what it is because it is only in this acceptance by normalization that these things become common practice and we lose all sense of how a country should be run. We lose the ability to hold our elected officials and their lackeys accountable if we’re willing to look the other way because they do this so often it’s easy to just overlook all of it. So no I will not be overlooking details like Todd Blanche citing to a completely irrelevant case in a memo backing up his overtly corrupt self dealing on behalf of the president.
Another important part of the May 18th Memo Todd Blanche wrote in support of this slush fund is in paragraphs D and E. Paragraph D provides that once the funds have been transferred into the hands of this so called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” you know the fund that will be solely and secretly controlled by 5 people hand picked by the President, then quote “the United States has no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.” Okay so if these 5 people make off with the funds and use them for fraudulent means then we the people have zero recourse for the misuse of our tax dollars. Cool Cool but wait it gets better. Paragraph E provides that the funds in the slush account aren’t just to be used to pay off the people claiming to have been wronged by the weaponized DOJ. No no, they can also be used to pay for quote “per diems, administrative services, funds, facilities, staff, travel, and other support services as may be necessary to carry out the mission of the Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Okay so even though the 5 members of this board will be voluntary, they still get per diems and travel expenses covered. So we’re paying for more private jet rides and lobster dinners for the 5 goons who will have full control over 2 billion of our dollars. Like do you see how absolutely fucking corrupt this entire setup is? To say this is unprecedented would be an understatement, that’s why Blanche had to point to some random Obama era case that had nothing to do with this one because there IS NO PRECEDENT FOR THIS because it is BLATANTLY FUCKING ILLEGAL. It is the President of the United States using his role as the president to award his allies, his lackeys willing to commit crimes for him, with taxpayer money without our consent. Period full stop this is corruption at the highest level like I cannot overstate how out of fucking bounds this is.
And this slush fund is part of a larger pattern with Trump related especially to January 6ers. And of course we don’t fully know what’s going on in Trump’s head, but he’s really obsessed with the people who stormed the capitol on January 6th and then were held accountable for their illegal actions. And I think it’s because he sees them as an extension of himself. Not that he identifies with them, no ew they’re poor, but that their prosecution and, indeed, PERsecution was the DOJ attempting to get at him through them. They’re ALL victims here. Victims who are experiencing consequences for their actions and they really don’t like it because it’s not fair to be held accountable!! And luckily for the Jan 6ers, Trump identifies so strongly with them that they don’t have to be held accountable at all, and Trump pardoned them all at the beginning of his term last year, if you’ll recall. And boy some of those former defendants sure have been busy over the last year and a half. According to a report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or CREW, which was released back in December so probably doesn’t even cover everything, quote “At least 33 January 6th insurrectionists pardoned by President Trump have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes since January 6, 2021.” According to CREW quote “Six of the pardoned January 6th insurrectionists are charged with committing child sex crimes, ranging from sexual assault to possession of child pornography. At least five were charged with illegal possession of weapons, including at least two who had a previous domestic violence conviction. Five were arrested or charged with driving while impaired or under the influence. In two of these cases, the defendant’s reckless driving resulted in a fatality. Two were charged with rape.
In four cases, the insurrectionists allegedly reoffended after receiving their pardons from Trump. Most recently, Christopher Moynihan was charged with a felony for threatening to murder House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in October. John Andries was convicted in June for violating a peace order by following the mother of his child in violation of a court order. Brent Holdridge and Zachary Alam were charged in May with burglary and breaking and entering, respectively.
Other insurrectionists had interactions with law enforcement that highlight the dangers posed by Trump’s decision to grant them clemency. Matthew Huttle was killed during a traffic stop when he reportedly resisted arrest and was armed. Nathan Pelham fired on police when they arrested him.”
But these guys are PATRIOTS, THEY’RE the VICTIMS, okay, they deserve our taxpayer money!!!
So the pattern is: he talks about January 6 all the time, he pardons the people involved in the incident and calls them patriots. He purges all of the FBI agents and DOJ attorneys who worked on the investigations into the January 6th insurrectionists. Then last year he created a “Weaponization Working Group”, a government body within the Department of Justice meant to investigate so called abuses of power by the Biden administration. This is a further attempt to legitimize his claims that Biden used the Justice Department to go after him and his allies, to further paint his allies as victims, claiming the Biden DOJ showed anti-conservative and anti-Christian bias, which former officials dispute and which is of course based on no evidence, no laws, no facts, just vibes. But by creating an official working group, by sending the DOJ on a wild goose chase to investigate this so called weaponization of the Justice Department, Trump can then point to that and say look it’s real, they’re investigating it and everything. It’s all one big dog and pony show meant to convince the American people that what he’s been saying all along is true, that 2020 was stolen, that the Russia investigation was a hoax, that January 6 was just a peaceful demonstration by patriots, that Trump is the victim in all of this, that he’s being targeted at every turn by evil communist terrorist leftists and Democrats and antifa and immigrants, and that he and, by extension all of his supporters, is an innocent victim in this who is righteously fighting back, using any means necessary. And those means are all justified because look how unfairly he’s been persecuted. And it’s all smoke and mirrors. And none of it is backed up by facts or laws or anything. And that doesn’t matter because he’s made sure he has cult-like control over a base of people who are willing to follow him no matter what he does. He COULD shoot someone in broad daylight on fifth avenue and still have the support of his base. He was correct when he said that. He absolutely could. There are a million think pieces dropped every other day about quote unquote MAGA infighting, the MAGA civil war, the fracture in the MAGA base, over Epstein, over Iran, over the AI picture of Trump as Jesus, and yet there are still people out there, MILLIONS OF THEM, evidenced by the likes of Megyn Kelly, who say he could nuke an entire COUNTRY and I would still vote for him. We are a country that has lost the fucking plot, filled with millions of people who are so terrified that they’ve completely lost their humanity, and they’re willing to continue to follow this person who is walking them off the edge of the fucking cliff.
Okay but then, of course, it gets worse. The original memo about the slush fund was released on May 18th. The next day, yesterday, Todd blanche issued an addendum, conveniently AFTER his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, so Congress wasn’t able to question him on this. Paragraph C of the addendum says, quote “The United States releases, waives, acquits, and forever discharges each of the Plaintiffs [meaning Trump] from and is hereby forever barred and precluded from prosecuting any and all claims … whether presently known or unknown that could have been asserted by Defendants [the IRS] against any of the Plaintiffs or related affiliated individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly), or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries, which arise out of lawfare and/or weaponization or any matters that could be pending (including tax returns) before Defendants or other agencies or departments.” Ok that’s fucking legalese soup but it effectively bars the IRS from ever auditing or suing Trump or his businesses or any of his family members for anything related to anything they’ve ever done.
Basically this wipes his slate clean, all his tax evasion, all his shady dealings, all his childrens and businesses shady dealings, they’re all off the table for any future prosecutions or investigations. According to the New York Times, this will likely result in a $100 million dollar windfall for Trump personally, who has been under a years-long audit of his (allegedly) mishandled taxes related to a fraudulently claimed $72.9 million dollar tax refund that Trump claimed and received back in 2010. So like you know when you file your taxes and sometimes you get a little refund after you file? Yeah Trump got that. But it was $72.9 MILLION DOLLARS and, apparently, allegedly, completely fraudulently obtained. But with this one paragraph addendum on this random settlement agreement that he made with himself, that audit, that fraud, that theft of taxpayer money, just goes away, coupled with the additional $2 billion dollars of stolen taxpayer money to pay off his friends, along with untold amounts of other tax fraud that Trump and his family has probably committed over the last few decades that all just gets swept under the rug. Again, the brazenness of this is fucking breathtaking.
And once again the Trump regime attempted to normalize this through the thin veneer of the legal system. A spokesperson for the Justice Department told the Washington Post that this addendum is just a customary part of the legal settlement process that releases both parties from claims against each other. Yeah except it’s not. Settlement agreements typically bar future claims between the parties related to the specific issue at hand in the lawsuit. So you can’t sue each other again over the same exact issue. That is NOT what this did. This says the IRS is barred from suing Trump and also his entire family and all their businesses over ANYTHING THEY’VE EVER DONE. That’s fucking insane, that is beyond the pale. Again we cannot normalize this we cannot buy the regime’s propaganda that this is just business as usual. They are trying to capitalize on the fact that most people don’t know how this process works and can’t decipher legalese, so let me do it for you. This is NOT normal.
And what is Congress gonna do about it? Yup, you guessed it, probably fucking nothing. Democrats are of course pouncing on this to point out that it’s incredibly unbelievably fucking illegal, but as the minority party there’s not a ton they can do in terms of oversight. They questioned Todd Blanche about it during his testimony on Tuesday, all that really does is provide a few soundbites for lawmakers to put on their social media feeds. The House Democrats’ Litigation Task Force filed an amicus brief with the court urging the judge to dismiss the case with prejudice and find that because the suit shouldn’t have been brought to begin with then the settlement agreement is void as well. Amicus briefs are just suggestions and the court doesn’t have to do anything with that. And Republicans are, per usual, going to completely abdicate their duty to the American people to do their fucking jobs, completely hand their power over to the President on this one, and just roll over. The New York Times was entirely too generous to the couple Republicans who questioned the slush fund, saying that “blowback appeared to be mounting” including from Republicans like John Thune, the Senate majority leader, who said he “was not a big fan” of the fund and said he didn’t see a “purpose” to it. Oh yeah, real blowback, you really told him John.
So Congress probably isn’t going to do anything, but there likely will be lawsuits stemming from this settlement agreement to try to invalidate it, and there’s still the possibility that the judge herself will say that they had no authority to settle the case to begin with. We’ll see. Again, this is unprecedented and follows the trend of the Trump regime just doing shit in court that makes no legal sense and has no legal precedent and seeing what the courts do about it, if anything. My only hope is that once the dust settles on the Trump regime Todd Blanche will be held accountable for his fraudulent abuse of his power in the name of the president. Only time will tell.
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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from yesterday about how we’re in the second gilded age and how we get out of this.
