Federal Judge SIGNALS PRISON Is INEVITABLE For Trump After $10 Billion IRS Deal | Nicolle Wallace
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2026年07月19日
Federal Judge SIGNALS PRISON Is INEVITABLE For Trump After $10 Billion IRS Deal | Nicolle Wallace
Forever barred. That phrasing sits inside an order Todd Blanche signed by himself on the nineteenth of May, and it strips the Internal Revenue Service of any claim it could ever bring over Donald Trump's past tax returns. The reach of it covers every return filed by him, by Donald Junior, by Eric, by the Trump Organization and the family companies hanging off it, up through the date of the deal that produced it. Nobody has withdrawn that order. It is operative this morning.
Two months of shouting went at a different document entirely. One point seven seven six billion dollars, sitting in a pot the Justice Department named the Anti-Weaponization Fund, earmarked for people who say the government came after them. Congress swung at it. In June the department paused the whole thing, after a federal judge froze work on it. Blanche walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee this week and called the fund dead. And I keep saying dead, killed. The paperwork will not carry either word, and that is the hinge the whole hearing turned on. What he told the senators is that the department is not moving forward. That phrase does very different legal work.
Underneath all of this sits a crime that did happen, and the loudest voices in the argument keep stepping over it. Charles Littlejohn worked inside the IRS as a contractor. He walked out with Trump's tax records and handed them to the New York Times and ProPublica across two thousand nineteen and two thousand twenty, which broke a confidentiality statute that predates every person now arguing about him. Guilty plea in two thousand twenty-three. Five years in federal prison. Trump had a real injury here, and skipping past it makes the rest of this harder to follow, not easier. Three days before the lawsuit landed, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cancelled his department's contracts with the consulting firm that had employed Littlejohn.
Then the arithmetic. Congress already set the price of that injury, over in section seventy-four thirty-one. A thousand bucks for each act of unauthorized disclosure, or whatever actual damages a taxpayer can prove, with punitive damages available where the leak was willful or grossly negligent, plus costs. In January, Trump and his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization filed in the Southern District of Florida and asked for ten billion dollars. That money would come out of the Treasury of the United States, in a suit against two agencies that answer to him.
Kathleen Williams sits on the federal bench down there. Obama put her on it. She looked at a case where the plaintiff runs the defendants and asked the question neither table wanted asked. Was there a live fight here at all. Article three of the Constitution limits federal courts to cases and controversies, which is a dry way of saying two sides have to be at odds with each other before a judge can touch anything, and she could not find the opposition. She ordered the parties to brief it. She invited outside lawyers with no stake in the outcome to come tell her what they thought.
#ToddBlanche #TrumpIRS #AntiWeaponizationFund #SenateJudiciary #JohnCornyn #trump
Forever barred. That phrasing sits inside an order Todd Blanche signed by himself on the nineteenth of May, and it strips the Internal Revenue Service of any claim it could ever bring over Donald Trump's past tax returns. The reach of it covers every return filed by him, by Donald Junior, by Eric, by the Trump Organization and the family companies hanging off it, up through the date of the deal that produced it. Nobody has withdrawn that order. It is operative this morning.
Two months of shouting went at a different document entirely. One point seven seven six billion dollars, sitting in a pot the Justice Department named the Anti-Weaponization Fund, earmarked for people who say the government came after them. Congress swung at it. In June the department paused the whole thing, after a federal judge froze work on it. Blanche walked into the Senate Judiciary Committee this week and called the fund dead. And I keep saying dead, killed. The paperwork will not carry either word, and that is the hinge the whole hearing turned on. What he told the senators is that the department is not moving forward. That phrase does very different legal work.
Underneath all of this sits a crime that did happen, and the loudest voices in the argument keep stepping over it. Charles Littlejohn worked inside the IRS as a contractor. He walked out with Trump's tax records and handed them to the New York Times and ProPublica across two thousand nineteen and two thousand twenty, which broke a confidentiality statute that predates every person now arguing about him. Guilty plea in two thousand twenty-three. Five years in federal prison. Trump had a real injury here, and skipping past it makes the rest of this harder to follow, not easier. Three days before the lawsuit landed, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cancelled his department's contracts with the consulting firm that had employed Littlejohn.
Then the arithmetic. Congress already set the price of that injury, over in section seventy-four thirty-one. A thousand bucks for each act of unauthorized disclosure, or whatever actual damages a taxpayer can prove, with punitive damages available where the leak was willful or grossly negligent, plus costs. In January, Trump and his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization filed in the Southern District of Florida and asked for ten billion dollars. That money would come out of the Treasury of the United States, in a suit against two agencies that answer to him.
Kathleen Williams sits on the federal bench down there. Obama put her on it. She looked at a case where the plaintiff runs the defendants and asked the question neither table wanted asked. Was there a live fight here at all. Article three of the Constitution limits federal courts to cases and controversies, which is a dry way of saying two sides have to be at odds with each other before a judge can touch anything, and she could not find the opposition. She ordered the parties to brief it. She invited outside lawyers with no stake in the outcome to come tell her what they thought.
#ToddBlanche #TrumpIRS #AntiWeaponizationFund #SenateJudiciary #JohnCornyn #trump
