They Killed the Slush Fund. Nobody Killed the Immunity.

A federal judge just found the President’s own lawsuit was filed in bad faith. He’s appealing anyway. There’s exactly one reason a man appeals a ruling about money he’s already given up.

They Killed the Slush Fund. Nobody Killed the Immunity.

A federal judge just found the President’s own lawsuit was filed in bad faith. He’s appealing anyway. There’s exactly one reason a man appeals a ruling about money he’s already given up.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #986: Friday, July 31st, 2026

Steve Benen, producer of the Rachel Maddow Show, ended his written piece earlier today with a question. He was too polite to answer it…so I’ll do it for him.

He asked why Trump would bother appealing a court order about a settlement that’s already dead. If the slush fund is finished…and everyone says it is…what’s left to fight over?

Here’s the answer.

The fund was never the prize.

Start With What Actually Happened

Let me lay this out fast…because the sequence is the entire story…and people keep losing the thread.

A contractor at the IRS leaked Trump’s tax returns during his first term. That was real. That was a crime. Somebody went to prison for it.

Six years later…Trump sues the IRS for ten billion dollars.

Now…stop and look at that sentence…because everyone slid right past it. He is the President. The IRS is part of the executive branch. The executive branch is him.

He sued himself.

The judge in the case noticed this. In late April…she said out loud…what everybody was thinking; that the president appeared to be sitting on both sides of the table.

Then in May…he withdrew his own lawsuit.

And…within days…his administration announced his reward for having done so: a fund worth roughly $1.77 billion…in taxpayer money…for victims of government “weaponization.”

Republicans and Democrats both looked at that and used the same word. Slush fund.

The pushback worked. Sort of. Blanche went out…and declared the fund dead…and no money would be paid.

Everybody exhaled.

That was the trick.

What The Judge Found

Thirty-five former federal judges…thirty-five…filed a request asking the court to reopen it.

Judge Williams did. She said she intended to look into whether the deal was built on deception.

She apparently did not like what she found.

Her ruling this month concluded that Trump and his lawyers…acted in bad faith…and filed the suit for an improper purpose.

She wrote that the whole thing was an attempt to use the court…to launder legitimacy onto an arrangement that handed immunity…to people connected to the President and earmarked billions in taxpayer money for grievances that don’t exist in law.

Read that again.

That’s not a blogger. That’s not me. That’s a federal judge describing the President of the United States.

Then she went further:

• She issued sanctions.

• She made disciplinary referrals for Trump’s lawyer.

• She ordered copies sent to the New York and D.C. bar associations…where Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward hold their licenses.

• She voided the agreement as evidence of a valid settlement.

• And she barred the parties from even calling it a settlement.

That last one is small…and…it is savage. She took the word away from them.

Now Here’s The Part You Were Meant To Miss

The fund is dead. Fine. Everybody got their headline.

But the fund was one provision.

There was another one. It’s still sitting there. And it has nothing to do with payouts.

It shields Trump…his family…and his businesses…from IRS audits and enforcement on tax returns filed before the deal.

That provision did not die with the fund. Blanche said so himself…under oath…in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He was walked through it by Senator Cornyn with a poster board…and he confirmed the agreement remains an enforceable contract…that Trump’s attorneys could attempt to enforce.

So…let’s do the arithmetic the press won’t.

The judge voided the thing as a valid settlement.

The immunity lives inside that thing.

If the ruling stands…the immunity is on very thin ice.

That is what he is appealing to protect.

I want to be careful here…because I’d rather be right than loud: nobody has said that out loud…and I can’t read the man’s mind. But…you don’t file an appeal to defend a fund you publicly killed. You file it to defend the part you never mentioned.

He gave up the billion-seven and kept the shield. And we all clapped.

And Now Look Who’s Twisting In The Wind

Here’s where it stops being a legal story and becomes a power story.

Todd Blanche wants to be Attorney General. He’s acting in the job now. His nomination went to the Judiciary Committee.

The committee was supposed to vote yesterday.

They canceled it…as I was about as certain as I could be…that they would.

Cornyn and Tillis won’t commit. Not over Epstein…not over ideology…over this. Over the IRS deal and specifically over the audit immunity that’s still standing.

Asked whether he’d vote to advance the nomination, Cornyn said “he wasn’t prepared to vote yes.”

Meanwhile, a federal judge just sent paperwork about this same deal… to the bar association that licenses him.

Sit with the picture:

The acting Attorney General of the United States is one committee vote from the permanent job. The thing blocking him is a settlement that a federal judge has now found was filed in bad faith. And on the way out the door…that judge referred the matter to his bar.

There is no clean way through that room.

Why This One Matters More Than The Rest

You are exhausted. I know. There’s an atrocity a day and this one looks like paperwork.

It isn’t.

Every other fight in this administration is about power; who can be deported…who can be fired…who can be investigated. Ugly, but at least it’s about governing.

This one is about money. His money. Personally. Directly.

A man used the federal government to sue the federal government…extracted an immunity agreement…and nearly two billion dollars of your money as the price of dropping it…got caught…gave back the visible half…and is now in appellate court fighting to keep the invisible half.

That’s not politics. That’s a conversion scheme…with a docket number.

And…it worked well enough that the coverage moved on the second the fund died.

What To Watch, Specifically

Don’t watch the appeal’s outcome. That’ll take months.

Watch these three:

One.

Whether anyone in the Senate says the words audit immunity out loud before the recess. Cornyn is circling it. If it gets said plainly on the record…Blanche is finished.

Two.

Whether the bar associations do anything at all. They almost never do. But…a referral from a federal judge…on the record…about the sitting acting Attorney General, is not nothing…and it doesn’t expire.

Three.

Whether the immunity provision survives regardless. That’s the real scoreboard. If Trump ends this year unable to be audited on anything filed before 2026…he won. Everything else was theater.

They told you the fund was dead and hoped you’d stop reading.

I’m not going to stop reading. That’s what this newsletter is.

If you want the follow-ups…the appeal filing…the committee vote…whether anyone in the Senate finds a spine before August…subscribe. Free subscribers get the reporting. Paid subscribers keep this going.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. The statement his legal team put out today blames the IRS for having “allowed” the leak…and says the President is holding those who wrong America accountable.

The agency he is holding accountable is the one he runs. The wrong he is avenging …happened during his own first term. There is no sentence I can write that makes this dumber than it already is.

P.P.S. If you have a senator on Judiciary, the question is one line long: does the audit immunity provision still stand, yes or no? Not the fund. The immunity. Watch how fast the subject changes.

Sources

I don’t ask you to take my word for it. Here’s everything, so you can check me.

The appeal and Judge Williams’ ruling

• Steve Benen, “Trump files appeal after judge’s scathing order in his ‘bad faith’ IRS case,” MS NOW, July 31, 2026 — [ADD LINK]

• Benen, “Judge slams Trump-IRS ‘settlement,’ refers attorney for possible disciplinary actions,” MS NOW — [ADD LINK]

• Benen, “Trump has had many recent setbacks in court, but the IRS case poses the biggest threat,” MS NOW — [ADD LINK]

The audit-immunity provision, confirmed on the record

• NPR, “Takeaways from Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing for attorney general”, July 15, 2026 — this is the one that matters. Cornyn’s poster-board exchange, and Blanche confirming the agreement remains an enforceable contract.

• Senate Judiciary Committee, nomination hearing record and submitted materials

The canceled committee vote

• CNBC, “Todd Blanche AG nomination vote by Senate Judiciary postponed”, July 29, 2026 — Cornyn and Tillis, and what they’re actually holding out for.

• The Hill, “Blanche AG nomination looks increasingly precarious ahead of key vote”

• WBUR Here & Now, “Todd Blanche attorney general confirmation at risk of collapse”, July 30, 2026

• C-SPAN, Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting on the nomination — video, if you want to watch it yourself.

Background

• Ballotpedia, confirmation process tracker for Todd Blanche — running record of votes and dates.