Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche walks into his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday with a federal court order that may bar him from defending the very deal senators plan to grill him on.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida issued the 56-page ruling Monday, voiding a $1.776 billion IRS settlement Blanche engineered and finding President Donald Trump’s lawsuit sparked by a leak of his tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing opens Wednesday.
Republican senators had already been demanding answers for weeks about a provision that permanently shielded Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits.
Williams ordered the parties barred from “using, offering, admitting, or citing” the settlement in any “official proceeding.” A Senate confirmation hearing is an official proceeding under federal law, per 18 U.S.C. § 1515(a)(1)(B).
Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman called it a “very interesting situation” for Blanche.
“Remember how DOJ tried to silence Jack Smith from even mentioning his report based on Judge Cannon’s order?” Litman wrote on X, “Well, Williams has ordered parties that they can’t refer to the bogus unconstitutional ‘settlement agreement.’ Does that mean Blanche is so muzzled Wed?”
The ruling also puts the Justice Department in a corner on appeal. If the department fights back in court, it would have to argue the settlement was legitimate — directly contradicting Blanche’s repeated insistence that the fund is “dead, dead, dead,” Litman noted.
“No American should be above the law, not even the president — and maybe even particularly the president,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) told Semafor before Monday’s ruling.
“I’m not prepared to vote against him. I’m not prepared to vote for him until I get clarity on that,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said about Blanche and the audit immunity deal.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was equally skeptical. “I don’t like it, and I’ve asked for more information on it,” she told Semafor.
Blanche had insisted the audit bar was “not immunity” and “purely retrospective,” but the order found his May testimony claiming there was “no judge” to review the deal was “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”
The order found the entire arrangement had “no viable basis in law or fact.”
Williams directed her order to the New York and D.C. bars — where Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward are members — for disciplinary review. Trump nominated Blanche to permanently lead the Justice Department 16 days after the settlement was announced.
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