She also referred his attorney for possible professional discipline.
The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the unlawful leak of his tax returns in 2019. The honey pot payments were pitched as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger that felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in a 56-page order Monday.
Williams ruled that any entities affiliated with the slush fund settlement—including the president, the Treasury Department, and the IRS—were “prohibited” from using the details of the arrangement in any official capacity. She also referred Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline.
She noted that while Trump had the right to pursue legal action over the unauthorized publication of his tax returns, he chose not to do so while he was still a private citizen. Instead, Trump did not bring the charges until he had returned to the White House and subsequently appointed his former lawyer, Todd Blanche, atop the Justice Department.
Correct me if I’m wrong here. It sounds like because the judge nullified the entire settlement, including the immunity agreement signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the legal barrier protecting Trump’s past tax returns from audit has now been struck down.
I know this can be appealed, but at this stage, it sounds like a huge blow shining some serious light on the Trump family’s grifts.
This is what the judge ordered:
The Parties are prohibited from referring to the purported “settlement agreement,” or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a “settlement” reached in this matter, Case No. 26-cv-20609-KMW (S.D. Fla. 2026).63 “Plaintiffs” means the named Plaintiffs in this lawsuit: President Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, the Trump Organization, LLC and includes any of their agents, representatives, officers, directors, employees, partners, corporate agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, or any other person acting in concert with the party or under the party’s control, whether directly or indirectly. “Defendants” means the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury.
This order doesn’t seem to explicit prohibit the parties from following the terms of the settlement. Merely that the settlement is not to be spoken of again in court.
There are two other orders. One of them is to issue a disciplinary referral against Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar. This is the court telling the bar association that they strongly believe the lawyer in question has committed a violation of ethical rules. However, I frankly do not find it particularly likely that the Florida Bar will act strongly on this referral, though I’m open to being surprised. The second order is to ban Trump lawyer Daniel Epstein from filing any more applications for pro hac vice in the Southern District of Florida. A pro hac vice application is a tool used to request permission from a court to represent someone for one case only when the lawyer in question doesn’t have a valid licence to practise in the state where the case is being conducted.
It’s not a settlement.
Okay, so there’s a principle in law, which is that one calls a document by the thing it purports to be. If it is not valid, you prepend “purported” in the contexts where it would be ambiguous otherwise, and explain your reasons as to why and the readers will know what you’re trying to say. You do not play word games with finding creative and insulting things to call it.
And this is the part where the statute of limitations will fuck us…
The claims are already out of time. And Trump is only entitled to a few thousand dollars per occurrence anyway. If the IRS actually had reasonable lawyers representing them, they’d have settled this case for maybe $50,000. Ten billion dollars is a Dr. Evil-level demand.
Zoinks!!
