Blanche said the ‘weaponization fund’ was dead. Now the Justice Department is appealing
Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter filed notice on September 11 that the Justice Department will appeal to the Eleventh Circuit from Judge Kathleen Williams’s July order dismissing the President’s and his two eldest sons’ ten-billion-dollar suit against the IRS and Treasury. Williams found the case non-adversarial, collusive and jurisdictionally improper because the plaintiff effectively controlled both sides of it, and held that it existed to legitimise a settlement establishing a $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate presidential allies, including January 6 defendants. She wrote that in abdicating its responsibility to defend the interests of the United States the Department entered a settlement that disregarded its own policies and accomplished objectives prohibited by law, and she referred the President’s personal attorney to the Florida Bar. The appeal is the Department’s first appearance in the case and sits awkwardly against Blanche’s August confirmation testimony that the fund was dead. Democracy Docket is an advocacy-adjacent outlet and the bar complaints referenced remain unresolved.