Action 229. Slush and corruption!

This is a long one, friends.  It was written by Mary Hennessy, a retired attorney living in Maine.  After you read it, you will be deeply informed on the issue and ready to write a letter to the editor and/or convince Collins’ staff that we are watching her every move!  It’s OK to first read the Actions, then backtrack to the Background for info.
Background:
The “slush fund”: 
The Judgment Fund is a permanent appropriation created by Congress in 1956. The fund allows the Treasury Department to pay judgements on lawsuits or settle pending claims, generally with judicial approval, without a congressional vote on individual payments.
            This January, Trump, along with his sons and The Trump Organization filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. They alleged the IRS failed to safeguard tax records leaked by a private contractor. Career lawyers at the IRS recommended Treasury contest the suit, setting out their legal reasoning in a 25-page memo. The Justice Department, under the control of acting A.G. Todd Blanche, who is aggressively pursuing appointment as Attorney General (henchman-in chief ) never sent attorneys to appear in court to respond to the suit or to dispute any of the claims.(1)
            Recognizing that Trump, in suing the government he controlled, was on both sides of the case, Presiding Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Trump's personal lawyers and the Justice Department to brief the threshold question of whether a genuine case existed and scheduled a hearing for May 27.(2)
            In response, Trump dismissed his lawsuit against the IRS and the Department of Justice established the Anti-Weaponization Fund (colloquially the “slush fund”). It requires that the Judgment Fund transfer $1.776 billion to the slush fund to benefit President Trump’s allies, including, apparently, Trump family members and the January 6th insurrectionists who attacked U.S. Capitol police officers. The U.S. Attorney General would be responsible for appointing a five-person commission to administer the payouts. The commissioners would be subject to removal by Trump at any time. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement Monday that “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-led law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, and the IRS.” (3)
Further corruption:
The following day, Todd Blanche expanded the settlement agreement to completely bar the IRS from pursuing tax claims against Trump, his family and his businesses. The text of that expansion is attached below the references, as an image. This amounts to quite a windfall. In 2024, The New York Times calculated that a loss in an I.R.S. audit could cost Mr. Trump more than $100 million, and this does not even include the Trump’s crypto currency shenanigans in tax year 2025. (4) What is Trump trying to hide? Would this provision survive in some form if Trump drops his slush fund plan?

Reaction to Settlement: 
A significant number of republican senators, clearly concerned with the optics, have come out against it. Mitch McConnell - “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – Take your pick,” Thom Tillis - “Imagine that, a fund that is set up to compensate people who assaulted Capitol Police officers and other responding agencies. People that had pled guilty to physical acts against the president may actually be able to get compensated. How absurd does that sound coming out of my mouth?” Senate Republicans were scheduled to vote last week on a $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement. After a heated meeting with Todd Blanche, and under threat by Democrats to raise the slush fund issue as an amendment, they hightailed it out of town for the Memorial Day Holiday. (5)
             The House Judiciary Committee by a 18-17 vote blocked Jamie Raskin’s motion to authorize subpoenas against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others. See Raskin’s 10-point fact sheet which clearly sets out why the slush fund and the bar to tax audits of the Trumps are unconstitutional, illegal and fraud on the court. (6)
            There have been a number of federal lawsuits filed to block the funding, including by two of the victims of the January 6 rioters. In another suit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a federal judge in Virginia (Brinkema) issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Department of Justice from taking any actions to create, fund, or issue payouts from the "Anti-Weaponization Fund” and has set a hearing for June 12. (7)
Then, a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges on Wednesday asked the judge in Miami (Judge Williams, who oversaw President Trump’s remarkable lawsuit against the IRS) to reopen the case and consider if the deal was an act of fraud. Judge Williams did reopen the case. She asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud” and whether Trump had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.” (8)
Action:
Despite the expressions of outrage, as with all of Trump’s criminal, unconstitutional and dictatorial actions, we predict Congress will not act. Likewise, though the lower federal court judges may do the right thing, the Supreme Court will not. Our current government is not going to take any meaningful action.  There will be no impeachment of Trump, Blanche, or the rest of the accomplices, no special prosecutors appointed.  

We have to take back the House and the Senate. This illegal settlement of a bogus lawsuit is an issue that everyone who honestly prepares and files their tax return, every law-abiding citizen, every person who values the efforts of law enforcement, and everyone struggling to pay for gas and health insurance should be livid about.  And, they seem to be. Write a letter to the editor. Then write another. Talk to your neighbors and any friends who may be on the fence. Knock on doors. Put out signs. If you can, donate to candidates whose campaigns are not financed by corporations.

We need a record. If we do prevail in the mid-terms (and we must), we need to be ready on day one to ensure that those who have orchestrated this travesty are dealt with appropriately. And, that any payouts are clawed back without delay. Predictably, Susan Collins has expressed ‘concerns’ about the slush fund. She “had some questions” on the issue for Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at a May 19 hearing on the administration’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget. Also predictably, her questions were not particularly tough and there was no follow-up. For the full hearing, See PBS News (9); for the Collins snippet, See CBS News (10).
            Collins, as chair of the Appropriations Committee, is uniquely positioned to use her powers of oversight to address this outrage. The diverting of tax money to insurrectionists and the Trump family is truly in her wheelhouse. This includes broad constitutional and statutory subpoena authority to compel the production of documents, records, and witness testimony. (11)
            Other Republicans on Appropriations include Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski, both of whom strongly object to the fund, and John Kennedy from Louisiana, who just lost his primary bid to a Trump endorsee. The majority of the other Republicans have expressed at least some misgivings. So, for Collins, properly fulfilling her responsibilities should not be that difficult. One of her major claims for reelection is how she can wield that power and experience for the benefit of Mainers. Make sure she does her job. And, shine a bright light if she doesn’t. 

References:

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/admin/irs-trump-lawsuit-deal.html(2) https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-president-who-sued-himself
(3) https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-voluntarily-drops-10-billion-lawsuit-irs-leaked-tax-records-rcna345193
(4)  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-irs-doj-lawsuit-audit.html
(5) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/us/republicans-trump-loyalty.html?searchResultPosition=1
(6) https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/hjc-dems-top-10-slush-fund-fact-sheet.pdf  or : https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/the-top-10-reasons-donald-trump-s-1776-billion-weaponization-slush-fund-and-super-pardon-for-his-family-and-businesses-are-unconstitutional-illegal-and-a-fraud-on-the-court
(7) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/us/politics/federal-judge-trump-fund.html
(8) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/us/politics/trump-irs-lawsuit-ruling.html?searchResultPosition=1
(9) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-acting-attorney-general-blanche-may-be-questioned-on-weaponization-fund-in-budget-hearing
(10) https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch-collins-presses-blanche-doj-trump-anti-weaponization-fund/
(11) https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44247