DOJ / IRS SETTLEMENT
"Reserving all rights and waiving nothing, Defendants appear solely for the purpose of noticing their appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit."
"I have testified under oath that it's dead." — — AG Todd Blanche, August 12
Two pages, docket entry 129, filed Friday evening September 11 in Trump v. IRS in the Southern District of Florida, signed by Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter. It appeals Judge Kathleen Williams's July 13 order, which rejected the settlement of the Trump family's $10 billion suit against the IRS and Treasury as an "improper" case brought to legitimize the deal. Blanche's sworn statements survive intact: the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund was rescinded on August 2 in exchange for the Cornyn and Tillis votes, no commissioners were seated, no money moved, and the appeal does not ask for it back. It asks for the contract. Inside that contract is the term from entry #23 — a permanent bar on the IRS examining any return Trump, his family or his businesses filed before May 19, 2026 — which needs no commissioners, no claims process and no press release to be worth more than the fund ever was. Two details nobody quoted from a two-page filing: this is the first time DOJ has appeared in the case, in a ruling that treated its refusal to appear as evidence of collusion, and it went in after the close of the news week, two days after Blanche headlined the Dallas midterm convention. Entry #42 asked why the settlement was never reopened. This is the answer, and it is on a docket.