A Settlement With Himself, Confirmed
The court finally got the chance to say so.
Two months ago, in this space, I wrote that the President had sued his own government and then settled the case with himself. I wrote that the defects were obvious on the face of the documents. And I wrote that the harder question — the more consequential one — was whether any court would ever get the chance to say so.
Today, one did.
Judge Kathleen Williams, sitting in federal district court in Miami, issued a 56-page order finding exactly what was plain in May: there was never a real lawsuit here. A case in federal court requires two genuinely adverse sides. This one had a single interest wearing two coats. As she put it, “the lead plaintiff and the government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.” Could parties manufacture immunity for themselves and call it litigation? Her answer was “a resounding ‘no.’”
That is the whole ballgame on Article III. Federal courts decide real controversies between real opponents.
I was on MS Now’s On the Line with Alicia Menendez when Fallon Gallagher joined us as the ruling crossed the wire. Here’s that conversation, as Fallon, in particular, processed and reported on the breaking news developments, in real time.
Collusive suits — two friendly parties staging a fight to get a court’s blessing — have been condemned since the nineteenth century. Judge Williams looked at a president suing agencies the president controls, settled by the president’s own former personal lawyers, and declined to let the courthouse serve as a notary.
She did not stop at the merits. She referred Alejandro Brito, Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, to the Florida bar. She said she would forward her order to the New York bar for its ongoing look at acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and to the D.C. bar for its investigation of the official who signed the fund paperwork. Another Trump lawyer was barred from appearing in the Southern District of Florida for a year.
And she took direct aim at Mr. Blanche’s sworn account to the Senate in May — his claim that there was simply no mechanism to review the deal. Judge Williams’ reply belongs in a first-year civil procedure casebook: “The court was available to review any pleading by any party at any time during this lawsuit.” His testimony, she wrote, was “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”
But do not mistake this for a clean win. The ruling leaves standing the one piece of the deal that always mattered most.
Recall the two prizes.
The flashy one — the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” with its prospect of payouts to people who stormed the Capitol — drew a political firestorm and got quietly pulled.
The other one survives. Permanent immunity from tax audits for Mr. Trump, his family, his trusts, and his affiliated businesses. As I wrote in May: the fund was the headline; the tax shield was the point. A single IRS examination going the other way could have cost the President north of $100 million. Mr. Blanche has said the shield stays.
Today’s order bars them from calling that shield a “settlement.” But the shield never lived in the settlement. It lived in a one-page order Todd Blanche signed alone — an order a federal judge now says violated the law barring the White House from steering IRS investigations. That is the hinge.
So ask the question this newsletter always asks. Who decides whether a sitting president gets permanent, personal immunity from the tax laws? Not the court that just ruled — it told us it had been handed a fiction, not a case.
The shield rests on the unilateral signature of an acting Attorney General. Which means the question moves, right on schedule, to the only body left to answer it.
Why? Well, on Wednesday, Todd Blanche sits for his confirmation hearing to become Attorney General of the United States. Senators will have Judge Williams’s 56 pages in front of them — including her finding that his account to that same body was misleading. The man who signed the audit shield will ask the Senate to make him the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, days after a federal judge said he misled the court.
Who decides who decides? This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and then, perhaps thereafter, one hundred senators do. Those senators represent the people, not the President.
In May I wrote that “this is not normal” does not absolve us — it obligates us.
A court has now said as much, in the measured language of a judicial order. The obligation did not end today. It just moved down the hall, from a courtroom in Miami to a hearing room on the Hill.
I’m glad you’re here. I’m grateful you’re engaged. Here and everywhere.
— James.
It is becoming clearer every day how the U.S. Government has been operating purely on trust in the person who the American people decide to vote in. This is just the consequences that follow if there was a bad actor in the White House. Never have we seen a President so publicly and openly involved in the DOJ decisions like this one, as well as, the prosecutions of political opponents. In addition to this settlement, the pure level of self-enrichment of himself and his family.
And what is the remedy for the American people now that the President has Absolute Immunity for actions taken under his Core Constitutional Powers like for example appointing an AG who attacks his political opponents when asked on Truth Social, or telling his DOD to invest in companies linked to his family? Seems like the answer is: Nothing.