Losing the slush fund won't save Blanche
35 Federal judges, R and D, have named a fraud upon the court and the entire judiciary
Trump didn’t drop his $1.8 billion slush fund because of political backlash. Worshipped by the nation’s lowest IQ foot soldiers and propped up by tax-and-regulation-averse donors no matter his crimes, Trump doesn’t care about the midterms because he doesn’t have to. If his suppression efforts fail, he’ll switch to intimidation. If masked goons don’t work, he’ll claim the results were ‘rigged.’ He may even succeed in manufacturing grounds for declaring martial law and cancelling the midterms entirely.
Elections don’t vex a man who uses force to erase them, which suggests most analysts got his slush-fund reversal wrong. As I see it, Trump didn’t drop the looting to soften the results in November. He dropped it to avoid having to name his third AG.
Trump and Todd Blanche quickly repackaged Trump’s IRS case without the ‘anti-weaponization fund’ because of an extremely unusual intervention in the case by 35 retired federal judges. Even Trump understands how a finding of ‘fraud upon the courts’ paired with larceny would tar his legacy, especially if his own AG is permanently disbarred over it.
Thirty-five federal judges express shock
On May 27, 2026, thirty five retired federal judges of all political stripes filed a motion to reopen Trump’s IRS case on suspicion of fraud against the court. The significance of what they wrote cannot be overstated.
The motion suggested that the DOJ had “deceived” U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams by announcing a settlement to the public after failing to mention it to the court. It was an “extraordinary” deception, the judges wrote, where (Blanche) “dismissed this case before the Court could complete its inquiry into whether there was an actual case or controversy, and then cited the ‘settlement’ of this case as the legal justification for looting the federal treasury of $1.776 billion dollars and purporting to release all possible federal claims against President Trump, his family, and his businesses.”
The judges aren’t just frothing over the larceny. The fraud, they noted, is bigger and more consequential. Trump/Blanche tried to manipulate and defraud, then circumvent and forever silence a federal court. Blanche tried to orchestrate that court’s imprimatur on an unprecedented theft of taxpayer funds, knowing full well that the court had no jurisdiction and never could because there was no case or controversy. If Trump sits on both sides of the same case, both controlling the outcome and financially benefitting from it, there is no legal controversy. There is no case. There is only theft, and claiming otherwise is fraud.
“Most egregious conduct”
The judges didn’t hold back, suggesting that this case demonstrated “most egregious conduct involving a corruption of the judicial process itself.” The parties “used the proceedings before this Court as a legal pretext,” they wrote, “while trying to deprive this Court of the opportunity to determine whether this was a real case or controversy in the first place. To (allow it) would be, in effect, to reward and immunize such collusion from judicial scrutiny, since the parties to such a scheme will obviously never challenge” fraud that benefits them personally.
As I wrote on May 21 in ‘Todd Blanche should be disbarred for this,’ Blanche moved to dismiss the case two days before his brief outlining the court’s jurisdiction was due. Blanche’s orchestrated ‘settlement’ purported to “bind the United States to a stunningly broad release of potential claims” against Trump for tax evasion, and to pay billions of dollars, without even trying to defend against Trump’s underlying claims.
Blanche failed to assert the most basic defenses to Trump’s IRS claims, defenses Blanche was legally obligated to assert, and which the DOJ has previously asserted in prior claims. There was even a prior IRS case involving the same IRS contractor as the one who released Trump’s tax returns, Charles Littlejohn. The government sought dismissal of that exact same case on grounds that a contractor was “not an officer or employee of the IRS,” yet for Trump it was worth $1.8 billion dollars.
Blanche’s failure to mount any defense at all to Trump’s claims, the judges note, “only emphasizes the fraudulent nature of the ‘settlement’ reached here” and “strengthens the conclusion that the litigation was collusive from the start.” Blanche seemingly “perpetrated a fraud on the judicial machinery itself, by fostering an appearance that the litigation involved adverse parties, when, in fact, it did not.”
Judge Williams ordered the DOJ to respond to the judges’ accusations of fraud upon the court by June 14. Blanche will edit that brief knowing that in New York, where he is licensed, committing a fraud upon the court is considered egregious conduct that supports immediate suspension or permanent disbarment. Removing larceny from the mix won’t save him.
Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.
I concur. Todd Blanche should be disbarred for this. Judges tend to detest it when you lie to them, to the courts, and try to defraud the courts. Blanche and Pam Bondi have also engaged in behavior which merits disciplinary action with their refusal to release the unredacted Epstein documents. We all know why they refused to release the unredacted files, it’s because they show Trump was one of Epstein’s most avid customers.
Another great article Sabrina. Looks like Blanche is headed for the unemployment line. It is likely he will not be returning to the Bar. I am continually amazed how brazen the Trump camp is when dealing with the judiciary. Take care.