People have to do things they may not want to do to please their boss, particularly if your boss is an unreasonable, demanding asshole. When your boss is Donald Trump, you sometimes are asked to do extreme things, illegal things. If you do them, you keep your job (for the moment). So you do things like this:
Federal judges have been accusing [Trump DOJ] prosecutors of misconduct, most recently in a case last week in Chicago in which a grand jury indicted six people, including a Democratic congressional candidate, for interfering with a federal agent and conspiring to interfere with a federal agent at a protest at a detention facility.
As Julie Bosman of the New York Times reported, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case after she discovered that prosecutors had talked to individual grand jurors outside the courtroom and removed those jurors who refused to indict, as well as apparently overstating the strength of the evidence against the defendants. After making these maneuvers, the prosecutors then tried to hide evidence of them by redacting the transcripts from the grand jury. source
In an extremely rare DOJ case ruled vindictive prosecution, the court found that the Trump DOJ had brought a baseless criminal prosecution against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in order to punish him for exercising his rights in court, and beating a team of Trump’s lackies to vindicate rights they clearly violated. Here is former DOJ prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explaining vindictive prosecution to Dean Obeidallah.
So it’s no surprise when ambitious scumbags, working for a criminally insane boss, file a fake lawsuit and make a fake “settlement” (as the fake lawsuit is about to be dismissed as a fraud) to defraud US taxpayers out of almost $2,000,000,000 and finance an army of loyal violent white men who have already demonstrated their willingness to gouge the eyes out of police officers to serve the illegal wishes of the man who brought the fake lawsuit and established the slush fund to pay them.
35 retired federal judges were not having this shit, and their motion to the judge who consented to dismissing the case is worth reading in its entirety. It is beautifully written and perfectly argues a flawless point, the judge who dismissed the case is legally permitted to, and must, reopen Trump’s fake case for a hearing on a fraud against the Court. Here’s the introduction:
On May 18, 2026, this Court dismissed this action with prejudice in response to Plaintiffs’ Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice, filed earlier that day. The Court expressly noted in its Order dismissing the case that “the Notice does not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement,” and thus “there is no settlement of record.” The Court further noted that Defendants “neither submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”
The Court was deceived. Despite Plaintiffs not having mentioned any settlement in their Notice, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) publicly announced a “settlement” of this action shortly after Plaintiffs filed their dismissal. That “settlement” commandeers the contrived sum of $1.776 billion from the United States Treasury, to be handed out to recipients chosen by a commission effectively controlled by the President. The DOJ is calling this the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
The day after the “settlement” containing the Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced, the DOJ announced that it had subsequently agreed to release “any and all claims . . . whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been asserted by [the United States] against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals . . . or parties . . . by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which arise out of . . . any matters currently pending or that could be pending . . . before Defendants or other agencies or departments.”4 The plain language of this extremely broad provision sweeps in Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audits of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and all other claims the United States might have against Plaintiffs—extraordinary benefits for which no consideration was provided to the government.5
The parties to this case are using this lawsuit as the legal justification for these actions. This is not speculation; the parties themselves have proclaimed it, repeatedly. For starters, the DOJ implemented all of the actions described above via a document expressly titled “Settlement Agreement,” captioned with this case’s caption, plus a three-paragraph addendum that references that “Settlement Agreement” in its first paragraph and in its third paragraph purports to “forever bar[] and preclude[]” the United States from pursuing claims that could have been asserted “by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs” in this case.6 The “Settlement Agreement” was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward the same day Plaintiffs filed their Notice; in fact, Plaintiffs’ filing of the Notice was expressly required by the “Settlement Agreement.”
The addendum granting the extraordinarily broad releases to the President and his family and businesses was signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche the next day, May 19. Yet none of the parties filed either of these documents with the Court. In addition, shortly after announcing the “settlement,” the Acting Attorney General issued an order creating the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” That order—which references the “Settlement Agreement” in this case—explicitly identifies the Judgment Fund statute, 31 U.S.C. § 1304, under which Congress has authorized appropriations for payments of settlements against the United States, and 28 U.S.C. § 2414, which authorizes payments of “final” judgments against the United States including compromise settlements and “imminent” claims, as the statutory bases for the creation of the AntiWeaponization Fund. Payments purportedly made pursuant to these statutes in the absence of a genuine case or controversy are not authorized. Movants submit that this “settlement” is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the
Court.
The initiatives [see below] are part of an effort by Mr. Trump to honor himself while commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday.
(great line from today’s NY Times, referring to Trump’s glaring face on the new $250 bill, his signature on all paper money, more sycophants lapping from his capacious tush)
E.J. Carroll at the time of the sexual attack Trump lied about and defamed her over
gratuitousblahg 