On Sunday night, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that he had agreed to change the terms of President Donald Trump's "settlement agreement" with the IRS. Blanche formally rescinded his May 18 order establishing a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" designed to benefit the president's friends and followers, and he issued a statement about the scope of the IRS immunity he gave Trump in another order issued on May 19. Those moves were aimed at addressing the concerns of two Republican senators who had held up the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on Blanche's nomination as attorney general.
Although Blanche's concessions may clear the way for his confirmation, they underline the flagrant phoniness of a brazenly corrupt arrangement that he dishonestly portrays as the result of a bona fide legal dispute between Trump and the IRS. Trump's lawsuit against the agency, which alleged damages from an IRS contractor's illegal disclosure of his tax returns, never involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties. It was a transparent excuse for granting Trump, his family, and his supporters huge favors at taxpayers' expense. By itself, Blanche's approval of that jaw-dropping scam makes him unfit to run the Justice Department.
