"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 from this Court's July 13, 2026, ECF docket entry #106 and any orders and decisions merged therein."
On Friday evening, September 11, 2026, the Justice Department filed a two-page notice of appeal in Trump et al. v. Internal Revenue Service et al., No. 1:26-cv-20609-KMW, in the Southern District of Florida, docket entry 129. It is signed by R. Trent McCotter, Acting Deputy Attorney General, and it appeals to the Eleventh Circuit from Judge Kathleen Williams's July 13, 2026 order, ECF 106. That order rejected the settlement of the $10 billion lawsuit Trump and his two eldest sons brought against the IRS and Treasury, finding the suit "improper" and brought only to legitimize an extraordinary settlement between the Justice Department and the Trump family. The May 18, 2026 settlement is the instrument recorded in entry #23, which permanently barred the IRS from examining any return filed before May 19, 2026 by Trump, his family or his businesses, and it is the instrument that obligated the Attorney General to create the $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund recorded in entry #42. Blanche testified under oath at his July 15 Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing that the fund was dead, rescinded his own order establishing it on August 2 in exchange for the votes of Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who had withheld support pending written confirmation, and was confirmed 50-49 in a 4:17 a.m. vote on August 8. The rescission recited that no commissioners had been appointed, no money transferred, no claims process established and no claims paid. None of that is contradicted by the appeal: the fund remains formally rescinded, and the notice says nothing about reviving it. What the appeal seeks to revive is the settlement the fund came out of. According to Democracy Docket, the notice is the first time the Justice Department has appeared in the lawsuit at all — and Williams's July order had cited the department's conspicuous non-appearance as evidence of the president's double-dealing, since DOJ was nominally the defendant in a suit it had settled on terms favorable to the plaintiff who filed it. The filing was first reported by Politico's Josh Gerstein. Two days earlier, on September 9, Blanche had delivered a major address at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas.
Ran the contradiction, and only the contradiction. "Blanche said the fund was dead. Now DOJ is appealing" carried nearly every account, which is fair and which is also the smaller half of the story, because the appeal is not of the fund. The fund was an order, and the order is gone. The settlement is a contract, and the contract is what ECF 106 rejected and what the Eleventh Circuit is now being asked to restore. Almost nothing named what else is inside that contract: the permanent audit bar from entry #23, which does not need commissioners, a claims process or an announcement to operate, and which is the term that has always been worth more than $1.776 billion to the people who signed it. Two other facts sat in the two-page document and went unremarked. This was DOJ's first appearance in a case where its refusal to appear was part of the judge's reasoning. And it went in on a Friday night — the fourth time in this file that a document with a number attached arrived after the close of the news week.
Entry #42 closed on an open question: the order creating the fund was withdrawn, but the settlement obligating the Attorney General to create it was never reopened, was never signed by the Trump plaintiffs, and therefore remained enforceable by the only people it benefits — a point Blanche himself conceded at his confirmation hearing. The answer arrived on September 11 and it is on a docket. The department is not defending the fund. It is defending the settlement, which is the document that contains both the fund obligation and the permanent audit bar, and it is doing so for the first time in the case, after a federal judge treated its silence as proof that the suit was collusive. Every sworn statement Blanche made remains literally true. The vehicle is dead; the destination is on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Two days before it was filed he was on stage at his party's midterm convention, which is the arrangement entry #47 recorded while it was still only a speaker list.