Don’t Believe Todd Blanche About Trump’s Slush Fund From Hell
The Bulwark · C · trust 44/100
The attorney general nominee did not kill off Trump’s egregiously corrupt fund, even if he duped Sens. Cornyn and Tillis into thinking he had.
Philip Rotner August 4 Upgrade to listen 5 minutes 50 11 6 (Photo by Manuel Ceneta) THE SO-CALLED “ANTI-WEAPONIZATION FUND” established as part of a purported settlement between President Trump and the IRS isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping.
Don’t be fooled by the weasel-worded statements that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on the Department of Justice website and tweeted out late Sunday night. They are clearly intended to give a false impression that a stake has finally been driven into the fund’s heart. It hasn’t.
Blanche posted two written statements on Sunday night, one that he calls an “order” and one that he calls an “update.” Let’s look at each of them in turn.
Part A of the order, dated August 2, 2026, contains the operative language: “The Attorney General’s May 18, 2026 Order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund . . . is rescinded and shall have no force and effect.” Note that only the May 18 DOJ order is rescinded, not the settlement agreement between Trump and the DOJ that created the fund, and not the fund itself.
So let’s take a look at what it means to rescind the May 18 order.
The May 18 o rder is merely a step toward implementing the settlement agreement. As the May 18 Order explicitly states, the settlement agreement—not the May 18 order—“created the Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The May 18 order merely established the funding required by the settlement agreement.
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Accordingly, rescinding the May 18 order did not and could not have killed the fund, it only defunded it for the time being. Only a rescission or amendment of the settlement agreement between Trump and the DOJ, as to which both parties would have to agree in writing, could extinguish Trump’s contractual right to compel the DOJ to fund the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
The carefully crafted language of Part B of Blanche’s August 2 order confirms the limited effect of rescinding the May 18 Order. “For the avoidance of doubt,” Blanche tells us, the fund is “ not operative .” Not dead. Just not operative (because it no longer has any funding). The statement that “there is no Fund” appears to be strategically ambiguous—there may be no Fund in the sense that it is no longer funded, but it does not amount to an amendment of the settlement agreement requiring the DOJ to establish funding at some point.
The second document posted by Blanche on Sunday night, the so-called update, uses even more limited weasel wording. Apparently even the mush about being not “operative” was a bit strong for Blanche’s (or Trump’s) liking because now the update tells us merely that the fund “is not moving forward.” Blanche clearly deemed it unnecessary to finish the thought with “at this time.”
If Senators Cornyn and Tillis are too dense to understand the difference between “not operative” or “not moving forward,” on the one hand, and “dead forever,” on the other, then maybe Trump stumbled on something true by branding them as no longer fit to be senators.
Blanche has either bamboozled Cornyn and Tillis by giving them meaningless written “assurances” that assure nothing, or they have simply caved to pressure from Trump, Senate colleagues, the right-wing blogosphere, or their own allies and supporters. Even more troubling, they have completely folded on their purported efforts to limit or kill the outrageous immunity the DOJ has given Trump and his family regarding their tax returns. Merely assuring the two recalcitrant senators that the release given to Trump and his family applies “only retroactively” doesn’t come close to addressing the true vice of the deal: Giving Trump and his family complete immunity from prosecution for any crimes they may have ever committed in their tax returns, in exchange for his agreement to dismiss a corrupt sham lawsuit is a blatant betrayal of the American public. Claiming that it only applies retroactively—meaning it applies to any tax return Trump or his family have ever filed—only perfumes the pig.
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