Trump SUFFERS Blanche Vote BACKLASH as His “Immunity” from Tax Evasion is DRAGGED back into COURT!!!

Welcome to a special edition of Legal AF.We got some breaking news.No, not that Senator Cassidy doesn't have any political brass ones and has decided to fold.And we will likely have the confirmation and we have the confirmation, of course, of Attorney General Todd Blanche.That makes cases that are focused on bad things that Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice have done and will do.That's why those cases are so important.

And when I had Skye Perryman who runs Democracy Forward on just about 48 hours ago, we were sort of talking about, wouldn't it be great if there was a lawsuit that focused on the immunity that Todd Blanche unilaterally provided to his boss, his family, the affiliates for tax liability, criminal exposure, you know, basically giving him a free pass for tax evasion for the last 15 or 16 years.Shouldn't there be a case that really focuses in on that?And now we have it.And of course, it's the Floyd case having been brought by Democracy Forward as the public interest group there in front of Judge Brinkema.And when I had Sky on last time, I alluded to a reference to that lawsuit that I thought was underhanded, and I didn't think Judge Brinkema was going to appreciate it.Because when Todd Blanche was trying to get the votes of Cornyn and Tillis, he said in an August 2, 2026 posting, he said in his avoidance of doubt section that several frivolous lawsuits have been filed challenging the fund.

And I said, hmm, I know of one lawsuit that I would not call frivolous.In fact, the judge seems very concerned about the fund.And now we've got the amended pleading that puts it squarely in front of Judge Brinkema about the immunity that Todd Blanche gave, likely as a quid pro quo to get the judgeLet me bring on Skye Perryman to talk about what her organization and her plaintiffs have just done.Hi Skye.Hi, good to see you.

You too.You're a person of your word, as I always knew you would be.You said, I can't talk to you about this right now.But as soon as we file, and now you have filed, we have an amended complaint.You did it as of right.You didn't have to file a motion.

You have the right to amend your complaint.And now you've refocused it around this immunity provision that Todd Blanche unilaterally, in an order on the 19th of May, just gave away to Donald Trump, his family, his affiliates and 400 companies and everything else.And now you're asking Judge Brinkema to take a very, very hard look at that and find that it violates the law.Why don't you, before I read from it, why don't you update the audience in general about what just happened and then Judge Brinkema's order about the motion to dismiss that the DOJ had originally filed.

Yeah, so this is really unbelievable.First of all, let me say with a lot of kudos to our brave clients that have been In this case, from the beginning, the Floyd case, we have amended the complaint and we've continued to add allegations about the slush fund, because as we know, every time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he talks more about how the slush fund needs to exist.And so we are still challenging the slush fund.But we also added new brave plaintiffs, the National Treasury Employees Union, NTEU, which has employees as members who work at the IRS.And those employees are essentially alleging that what this agreement that Blanche and Trump and the Trump organization are engaged in to provide Donald Trump and his associates, his family, his organization, IRS immunity, conscripts them into the violation.law and is unlawful and is an unconstitutional emolument.

It's giving the president a gift that, you know, that it's an unconstitutional emolument.So those are the claims with respect to the IRS immunity provision that the amended complaint, if you, I know your listeners always go to our actual court documents.You guys love to feature the actual court documents.There is tremendous, great history in there about why there are provisions of our tax code that exactly what this agreement did, including, by the way, in a circumstance where in the Watergate era, in the Nixon era, he was seeking to weaponize the IRS against people and to use also the IRS to favor his friends.And Congress took action there to add additional protections, which is one of the many legal bases for our case.

Yeah, we just had Judge Wolf on who served in the Department of Justice in the era just after Watergate.And he reminded our listeners that some of the tapes, those secret surreptitious tape recordings that Nixon had, and he resigned as soon as they were ordered to be released.Part of it was him talking to the then IRS commissioner about why aren't you auditing more Democrats and auditing too many Republicans?

Exactly.And some of those became public years and years later.And Congress even acted at that time because it was so offensive And so that is, we are so incredibly grateful for our clients at NTEU for bringing this case, and then there's also emoluments issues as well.

Yeah, let me read, and we're going to post it up on Legal AF Substack for everyone to read, but let me just read a few paragraphs from the new amended complaint.Paragraph one, after President Trump brought an untimely and jurisdictionally faulty lawsuit against two federal agencies he controls, the DOJ and Department of Treasury executed a predictablyagreement with the President and the other Trump plaintiffs.Paragraph two, the agreement led to acting Attorney General, now Attorney General, he's confirmed, Blanche, issuing orders requiring the United States to give the President two very valuable things.That that anti -weaponization fund, but also immunity from any civil and criminal liability for Trump, his family, his businesses, and all others deemed to be related or affiliated.He's got 400 companies under the Trump Trust as it is, including a release of tax liability and tax audits about any conduct before May 18th of 2026.

Paragraph three the scheme is unprecedented unlawful and breathtakingly corrupt Attempt by the president and members of his cabinet that would be Blanche and others to manipulate the legal process and laws Intended to prevent political interference to achieve benefits for President Trump By its own terms and then he taught then you talk about the anti -weaponization fund with some new allegations I want to go to power.Finally.I want to go to paragraph 289 Additionally, Blanche had no authority to issue the immunity order, releasing all tax claims and terminating tax audits and liability of the president, his family, and those unnamed affiliated businesses for all previous tax years under 26 United States Code Section 71 .5.22, which makes it a civil, which says that the IRS must refer a civil or criminal case arising under the internal revenue laws to the DOJ for prosecution or defense.The IRS did not refer any cases to the DOJ involving tax liability or audits of any of the plaintiffs in Trump, let alone cases involving the tax liability or audits of unknown related or affiliated taxpayers.Moreover, the tax liabilities of the president, his sons, the Trump Organization,

et cetera, were never at issue in the Trump lawsuit.And so he didn't have the power.And that's, according to Judge Wolf, that is a crime for the president, even using the attorney general in this scenario, to try to have his Department of Justice decide whether to or not to audit somebody, right?

Yes, I mean, there are so many legal violations here and that it's really it's quite unbelievable.And so many of the fact patterns here just match right up to the things that motivated Congress to pass these laws in the first place.They're just like 15 times worse.You know, I mean, this is literally not just the president saying, well, why don't you, you know, audit less Republicans?It's the president saying, like, why don't you exempt me, my businesses and my family from scrutiny at all?I mean, it's just it's shows you how Watergate -level scandals, as I often say, are just, you know, falling off the front page of the paper today as if they're just daily news.

Yeah.Judge Wolf put it this way.He said, in the Nixon administration, the criminality was sporadic and secret.Here, it's persistent and public.

Right.So we're very proud of our plaintiffs.We're also, I'll just say, and I want to continue to make sure that we're highlighting, I mean, the brave plaintiffs, former prosecutor, you know, the city of New Haven.a protester, I mean, you know, Common Cause, so many plaintiffs, National Abortion Federation that came together and are still in the case, continuing to challenge the slush fund, continuing to ensure the slush fund is blocked.I mean, just to be clear, that's why when Plataud Blanche says it's dead, we blocked it, our brave clients blocked it, and now to add new clients to the matter and new claims to the matter that get at this IRS, you know, this IRS scam.

So Judge Brinkema issued her ownand she said by close of business on Friday or just before, she wants to know if the Department of Justice wants to stand on its original motion to dismiss or they want to refashion one aimed at the new operative pleading in the case.What do you ultimately, just to boil it down for our audience, if you win, What will Judge Brinkema have done concerning the validity of the fund and any attempt backdoor to have payments made, even if it's not in the fund, and this immunity for Trump and his family?What can a federal judge do?

Well, she's blocked the fund now and has been clear that one of the issues in the case is not just, you know, does the government agree out of the goodness of its heart one day to say it's not going to do a fund, but what, you know, is this fund going to exist under any name or in the future?And so, you know, that will continue and her order is quite But of course, we want to make it permanent.Right now, it's just a preliminary injunction order, and we need to make that relief permanent.As you saw in the complaint, and as your listeners can see, I mean, we also want to invalidate these immunity provisions.We want to make sure that our clients who work at the IRS are not put in these positions, and that fundamentally, that not just our clients, but also, you know, the public understands how unlawful this is.So we are going to continue to move forward with the case.

I'm interested to see what the government chooses to do.We feel very confident that we'll be able to meet, to oppose successfully their motion to dismiss if they stand on the one they've already filed.We feel very confident of our ability to also proceed on this complaint.

Who have they, Skye, who have they been trotting out from the DOJ to defend the case?

Well, you know, yeah, I mean, look, they, if you look at the papers themselves, you'll see a really unusual amount of politicalsigning the papers.And in the last hearing, there was a single individual from the Department of Justice.That's when, remember, Judge Brinkman says, you're brave because you came here.You're brave because you're standing here, came here alone.So we'll continue to see, but this is certainly a case that has an unusual amount of political appointees deeply engaged.

Yeah, the reason I ask is, you know, we're covering also the Katie Fang versus Todd Blanche case about the Epstein files and every filing prior to the last one from the Department of Justice was Stan Woodward, Stan Woodward, Stan Woodward.And all of a sudden, Jeanine Pirro's office popped up and they trotted out, you know, it's like they must be picking short straws now.You know, they trotted out this poor assistant U .S.attorney, he'd never been involved with the case, to start making major arguments to Judge Sullivan about Katie Fang, and more importantly, about the Epstein files.So I was wondering if you're seeing some sort of, you know, other shifting allocation of resources in the Department of Justice We'll have to see how they respond today.

Thank you so much for having me on.I do have to, I know we have to jump, so.

Yeah, absolutely.Thank you very much.Skye Perryman giving us the update here on the new filing, the amended complaint, and we'll continue to see it.It's the only judge right now that has directly in front of her whether the immunity given by Todd Blanche to Donald Trump is valid or not.We're going to follow that case closely.Thanks for being on Legal AF with us.

Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward.You're on Legal AF YouTube.Take a moment, hit the free subscribe button.

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