During His Confirmation Hearing, Todd Blanche Defends Trump’s Blatantly Corrupt IRS ‘Settlement’

“I’m his lawyer,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, describing his relationship with President Donald Trump. Blanche quickly corrected himself: “Was his lawyer,” he clarified. But the slip went to the heart of the main question that senators should be asking as they decide whether to confirm Blanche’s nomination as attorney general: Would he use that position to pursue justice or to advance Trump’s personal interests?

Probably the latter, judging from Blanche’s central role in Trump’s brazenly corrupt “settlement agreement” with the IRS, which a federal judge this week condemned as the “improper” product of blatant self-dealing. That cozy arrangement, which was predicated on a lawsuit that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said was phony from the beginning, delivered huge favors to Trump, his family, and his followers at taxpayers’ expense.

One of those favors was a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was designed to reward the president’s allies and supporters by compensating them for their alleged persecution by the Biden administration. Blanche approved that scheme and repeatedly defended it. But it provoked an intense bipartisan backlash that persuaded him to ditch the plan two weeks after announcing it.

As Williams noted, Blanche’s unilateral abandonment of the Anti-Weaponization Fund confirmed that Trump’s “settlement with myself” had nothing to do with a genuine legal controversy between adverse parties. According to Blanche, the deal was the result of a lawsuit in which Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization alleged damages from an IRS contractor’s illegal disclosure of their tax returns. But if that were true, Blanche would not have the authority to modify the agreement without the plaintiffs’ explicit and documented consent, which he did not bother to obtain.

Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas), a former judge, underlined that point during Blanche’s confirmation hearing. “The president of the United States, who is the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund,” Cornyn said, so “there is no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs” will not “raise that issue by way of a lawsuit” for “breach of contract.”

Blanche nevertheless insisted that the Anti-Weaponization Fund was dead for good. “There is no fund,” he said.

Cornyn did not seem to accept that assurance. During a recess, he told reporters it still seemed like the fund “could be revived at a future date.” But even if we take Blanche at his word, his avowed ability to kill the fund on his own authority contradicts his claim that it was part of an “agreement” between two sides in a bona fide legal dispute.

Although “a party may not unilaterally repudiate a settlement agreement once it is reached,” Williams noted on Monday, the cancellation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund “has not been memorialized or adopted by Plaintiffs or their lawyers.” Blanche’s decision therefore “demonstrates his confidence that he could speak for, and bind, both sides of this matter,” she wrote. “This certitude supports the conclusion that the Parties worked in tandem and were never actually adverse.”

There were other reasons to reach that conclusion. Trump had “direct, unassailable control” over the defendants, Williams noted. The government’s lawyers also answered to Trump, who had issued an executive order that crippled their ability to represent the IRS by forbidding them to take legal positions at odds with the president’s. Although Trump’s lawsuit was fatally flawed because he missed the statutory deadline for filing it, the Justice Department never bothered to contest his claims, in sharp contrast with the way it usually handles such cases.

Blanche actively participated in this scam, which he compounded by issuing an order that purported to shield Trump and his relatives from liability for tax violations and any other federal offenses they may have committed. Blanche presented that sweeping grant of immunity, which could save Trump more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties, as an addendum to the “settlement agreement.” But unlike the main agreement, it was signed only by Blanche, reinforcing the point that he was simultaneously acting as the head of the Justice Department and as Trump’s personal lawyer.

According to Blanche, the jaw-dropping immunity deal, which had nothing to do with Trump’s claims against the IRS, remains in place. During Wednesday’s hearing, Cornyn noted the broad language of Blanche’s order, which says “the United States” is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump or his family regarding “any matters currently pending or that could be pending” before the IRS, the Treasury Department, or “other agencies or departments.”

In addition to protecting Trump and his relatives from the IRS, Cornyn suggested, that commitment would shield them from actions by other agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not so, Blanche said, contradicting the language of his own order. “I hear what you’re saying,” Cornyn replied, “but that’s not what I’m seeing in the agreement.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) gave Blanche an opportunity to rebut Williams’ characterization of the IRS lawsuit as nothing more than a pretext for “a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” Blanche insisted that the outcome was “not at all” a result of collusion, saying it complied with the letter of the law, which “absolutely allows what happened here to happen.”

Blanche, in short, blessed a flagrantly dishonest and grossly unethical “settlement” that personally benefited his boss, then repeatedly misrepresented the nature of that arrangement. Although Trump may think Blanche’s eagerness to please makes him eminently qualified to run the Justice Department, senators should question that premise.