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Heather Cox Richardson: The Destruction of the Department of Justice Under Todd Blanche

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

When Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion, it was a breathtaking display of arrogance and greed. An independent contractor leaked Trump’s tax returns in 2019, along with the returns of other very wealthy people.

A few things to know about this event: the individual who leaked tax returns was convicted and sent to prison. The leaking of tax returns occurred while Trump was President. Trump was expected to release his tax returns as other presidents had done since —, but he never did.

Federal Judge Kathleen Williams made clear that she found the lawsuit fishy, since it was not an adversarial proceeding. As she pointed out, when Trump sued the IRS, he was essentially suing himself since he was in charge of the department he was suing. She was coming close to the conclusion that the lawsuit had no adversary and was possibly a fraud on the court.

Before she issued a ruling, Blanche and Trump announced that they had reached a settlement: Trump would drop his suit in exchange for the Justice Departnent agreeing to set up a fund of $1.776 billion to pay people who had been unfairly targeted and harmed by the federal government. They also agreed that the IRS would not audit Trump or his family (it was never clear whether the agreement covered audits up until 2026 or audits past and present.) Since Trump owed the IRS about $100 million, this piece was very important to him.

Judge Williams issued a ruling and declared the entire agreement void. She said that Blanche and Trump could not even call what they had done a “settlement,” because the terms they agreed to had no legal force.

Senators from both parties were outraged by the slush fund, which they believed would give payouts to the January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump friends such as Rudy Giuliani and others who helped his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Acting Attorney General Blanche assured them that the slush fund was dead but he refused to put it in writing.

When Trump nominated Blanche to be the Attorney General of the United States, two Republican senators said they would block him unless he produced a letter revoking his agreement with Trump.

And so with that background, read what Heather Cox Richardson said about the events of recent days:

Friday’s dismissal of the Department of Justice case against David Hearn for vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool came days after Hearn’s lawyers asked for transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment. The lawyers noted that the government’s only witness testified that the pool was already damaged before Hearn went near it, and that the witness could not quantify the cost of any damage Hearn might have done over and above the cost of repairing the existing damage. The lawyers told the court there were “irregularities in the government’s presentation of the evidence to the grand jury” that “call into question whether the grand jury was misled.”

The Department of Justice has been caught repeatedly misleading grand juries or committing misconduct in getting indictments. Hearn’s lawyers were suggesting that the Department of Justice engaged in the same misconduct in the indictment of David Hearn for damaging the bottom of the reflecting pool.

In their filing, they noted that a judge and former federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia had recently stated that “[g]enerations of presidential administrations and public officials” have reinforced the idea, called the “presumption of regularity,” that public officials do their jobs properly, operate in good faith, and follow correct procedures. But, the judge noted, “In just six months, the President of the United States may have forfeited the right to such a presumption.”

On July 28, J. David McSwane, Pratheek Rebala, and Carla Astudillo of ProPublica reported that judges across the country are calling out lawyers for the Department of Justice, questioning whether they can be trusted to tell the truth and whether they are operating according to centuries-old norms. Judges have called behavior by Department of Justice lawyers “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly,” and otherwise dishonest.

The degradation of the Department of Justice, which is charged with defending the rule of law for the American people, into an instrument of Trump’s political wrath has been illustrated in the fight over the confirmation of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to attorney general.

Before going to the Department of Justice, Blanche was Trump’s personal attorney. He led Trump’s criminal defense team in the case of falsifying records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, as well as his defense against the two cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith: the one indicting him for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the one indicting him for retaining classified documents after leaving office.

Since he took over for former attorney general Pam Bondi, Blanche has openly flouted the law in order to do Trump’s bidding. He secured indictments against people Trump perceives to be enemies, including former FBI director James Comey for posting on Instagram a picture of seashells arranged to form the number “8647.”

On July 29, Devlin Barrett and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported that the Secret Service agents who interviewed Comey in May 2025 were told to send a summary of that interview as quickly as possible to Trump on Air Force One. Trump’s close involvement in the case, the authors wrote, “is one of the most glaring examples to date of the degree to which Mr. Trump now directs federal law enforcement actions.”

On July 28, Comey’s lawyers filed motions to throw out on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution the federal charges Blanche brought against him. They noted that Trump had repeatedly made it clear he wanted Comey indicted, even going so far as to put his former special assistant Lindsey Halligan into office as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she indicted Comey just four days later. (That appointment was later found to be invalid.) The filings from Comey’s lawyers appear to show that FBI officers engaged in warrantless surveillance of Comey.

Like the lawyers in the Hearn case, Comey’s lawyers suggested that “irregularities in the grand jury process influenced the grand jury to return an indictment.” Like Hearn’s lawyers, they asked the court to “disclose the transcripts and audio recordings of all proceedings before the grand jury in this case” or to review them himself to make sure they followed the law. In a previous case against Comey, they note, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick found that the government’s actions raised “genuine issues of misconduct” that were “inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation.”

Blanche’s indictment of Comey to please Trump colors another of his actions: he backed the deal Trump made with the Department of Justice to establish a $1.776 billion slush fund to pay off those convicted of committing crimes surrounding Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Blanche put his name to the second half of that deal that seems to be being eclipsed by the slush fund but is clearly Trump’s main interest: an agreement between Trump and the Department of Justice promising to drop any pending claims against Trump, his oldest sons, or the Trump Organization for past illegalities in tax returns, and promising not to conduct audits of Trump’s tax returns.

That slush fund/nonprosecution deal has been a sticking point for Blanche’s Senate confirmation to attorney general, as two Republican senators—John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—want him to put in writing that the deal is as dead as he claimed it is in his confirmation hearing before they agree to support his nomination. But he has refused to do so. On Thursday, Trump suggested he was willing to withdraw Blanche’s nomination until Cornyn and Tillis are out of office, leaving him as acting attorney general.

Then, at 7:03 Friday morning, Trump threw a monkey wrench into this fight by posting that in fact, he emphatically supports the slush fund. He appears to reject the idea that it is dead, and seems to be counting on Todd Blanche to implement it, exactly as critics have said.

Trump seems to have been thwarted from getting his way quietly by putting Blanche in as attorney general without any promise to kill the slush fund and its accompanying promise not to prosecute Trump or his associates for crimes associated with their tax filings. And so, on Friday, Trump filed notice that he and the rest of the parties to the “agreement” will appeal the July 13 ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. She said that the suit that led to the $1.776 billion slush fund and the accompanying nonprosecution promise was filed to “manipulate the judicial process.” Williams said the Justice Department could not claim the deal it made with the Trumps was a judicial agreement.

At 7:32 Saturday morning, Trump posted: “If Senators Cornyn and Tillis, both upset because I wouldn’t Endorse them (they lost, and quit, respectively!), aren’t going to approve Todd Blanche, one of the most respected professionals, according to everybody, in the Country, to be the United States Attorney General, then I will keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill, which takes care of those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma!) Administration (I get nothing, although I was treated horribly!), PASSED. Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT”

After Richardson had posted her commentary, near midnight last night, CNN reported that Todd Blanche released a written statement declaring that he was rescinding the slush fund. This was what Senators Cornyn and Tillis had demanded, and it appeared that they are likely to vote to confirm him tomorrow.

CNN reported:

The document released Sunday also limits the addendum to that agreement that offers the president and members of his family immunity from tax investigations — a sticking point for Cornyn. The senator wanted Blanche to explicitly acknowledge that it applies only to past tax investigations against the president and those listed in the IRS lawsuit.

The Sunday order says the measure “applies by its terms only retroactively” and that it applies only to “the named parties in the lawsuit” referenced in the agreement.

Bottom line: Blanche abandons the slush fund but reaffirms that the IRS will not audit Trump or his family or the Trump Organization for any tax cheating in the past. As Heather Cox Richardson wrote, this was Trump’s main interest, not the slush fund.

So if Cornyn and Tillis are satisfied, Trump gets what he wanted: freedom from having his tax returns audited retroactively. This saves him at least $100 million, possibly much more.

And if Blanche is confirmed, Trump gets what he’s always wanted; his Roy Cohn in charge of the Department of Justice, pursuing his enemies and defending Trump’s actions.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Hoax, Justice, Trump

Robert Reich: There Is Nothing “Democratic” About the Third Way

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
10

The New York Times recently quoted a group called “Third Way,” which attacked Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the winner of the Michigan Democratic Senate primary.

Robert Reich writes that this portrayal of “Third Way” is “moronic bullshit.” He explains that Third Way is composed of corporate executives and financiers. He writes “There’s no ‘middle’ between neofascist corporatism and democracy.”

The kind of corporate BS now cropping up all across America 

Friends,

The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day. 

“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan. 

Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.” 

Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potential presidential swing states.”

Well, I find it deeply troubling that faux centrist groups are declaring war on progressives in the pages of The New York Times, without revealing who they really are.

If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.

Odd that The New York Times chooses to describe Third Way as a “leading Democratic centrist group” without revealing that it’s simply a Trojan Horse for corporate America. 

Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)

At this point in his article, Reich identifies the members of the board of Third Way, each of whom is a corporate titan.

Oh, and Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included West Virginia’s former Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said about its governing structure. 

In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.

Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.

Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA – The Internet and Television Association are members. 

Third Way donors have also given money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations. Among them, Entergy, Facebook, Google, and Reynolds American, according to tax records.

Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, revealed that Koch Industries secretly funded a report by Third Way intended to promote the Republican free trade agenda to Democrats.

After the Democrats’ 2024 election losses, Third Way argued that the party should reduce its dependence on small-dollar donors. In a five-page memo of “takeaways” from the election, Third Way asserted that small-dollar donors’ preferences “may not align with the broader electorate.” 

The memo stopped short of naming alternative funding sources, but the implication was clear: Less grassroots support means more reliance on big checks from super PACs and wealthy donors, which is exactly what Third Way prefers. 

The memo also included calls to curb “far-left influence,” adopt a “pro-capitalist” stance, and stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.” 

***

So, please, disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.” 

And pay no attention to headlines about “Democratic centrists preparing for war” against a “rising Left.”

Instead, focus on what’s really happening. 

Voters want people in power who are going to fight for them, and not for the super-wealthy or big corporations and Wall Street. 

This is especially true now — when the bottom 90 percent of Americans are struggling to pay the bills, a record portion of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent, big corporations and Wall Street have never been as powerful, Washington has been taken over by legalized bribery and corruption, and there’s no “center” between democracy and neofascism.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Hoax, Michigan

Florida: How Vouchers Are Destroying Public Schools and Violating the State Constitution

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

Article IX, Section 1 of the Florida constitution:

a) The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education and for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require. 

Article I, Section 3;

Religious Freedom

There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

The Florida state constitution explicitly requires that the state provide a free public education for all children. It explicitly forbids the use of any public funds for religious schools. In 2012, then Governor Jeb Bush promoted a referendum to change the constitution and allow vouchers for religious schools. Florida voters resoundingly said NO. But the voice of the people did not dissuade Bush and his friends.

Florida now has a full/blown universal voucher system where the state funds children who attend religious schools, private schools, even home schools, regardless of family income. Most of the children who use vouchers were already in nonpublic school.

The state now spends billions of dollars every year on charter schools and vouchers. Many charter schools operate for profit. Their lobbyists work in tandem with the legislature, which seems eager to defund public schools.

Ironically, Jeb Bush used to boast that Florida was successful because of its toughs count ability. Yet this is the same governor who pushed through vouchers, even though voucher schools have NO accountability.

Go figure.

Stephanie Vanos wrote the following article for the Orlando Sentinel. She is a member of the Orange County School Board, where her children are enrolled.

She wrote:

There is an alarming misuse of public funds in Florida that isn’t just unfair and irresponsible, it undermines our state’s constitutional obligation to provide a high-quality, uniform education for every child and erodes trust in the very system meant to serve all of Florida’s children.

The taxpayer-funded voucher program has created a shadow educational system, one where billions in taxpayer funds move with little oversight, leaving families and communities in the dark about how their money is spent. This lack of accountability and transparency has created a fractured, unequal  education landscape, robbing students of stability and opportunity no matter where they go to school.

Approximately $5 billion in taxpayer money is being siphoned away from our traditional public schools into voucher systems. Private schools that accept vouchers are held to a tiny fraction of the standards our public schools must meet, if any at all. Nearly a quarter of all state funding for education is now drained by voucher programs that serve only 15.3% of Florida’s students and overwhelmingly benefit families who were already paying to send their child to private school. How is this fiscally responsible?

The consequences of this system are clear in Orange County, where my kids go to school.

This year, our county was forced to close seven public schools and cut hundreds of positions despite the district earning high grades. An estimated $315 million of education money will be diverted from Orange County Public Schools to vouchers just this year. These closures and loss of funding are a direct result of a state system that puts politics and profits ahead of students.

Traditional public schools across the state are held to incredibly high standards on how and what they teach students, who they hire, how they report grades and more. However, the taxpayer-funded voucher program and charter schools are not held to the same standards and measures of accountability despite receiving public tax dollars.

Charter schools, deemed public schools by law, sometimes serve an unmet need in a community, and may operate transparently under a fully nonprofit model. In some cases, they can benefit our larger communities. However, charter schools operate with far fewer requirements and accountability measures than traditional public schools, and far too many are franchise operations, run by for-profit management companies that benefit affiliated for-profit entities with our tax dollars.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, School Choice, Vouchers

Katie Miller Betrays Her Friend, Dr. Anthony Fauci

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

Andrew Eggers of The Bulwark writes here about the close connection between Katie Miller, wife of Trump confidant Steven Miller, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. They worked together closely during the pandemic. They were friends. But it is longer wise for Katie to befriend Dr. Fauci. In MAGAland, he is the Devil incarnate.

Eggers writes,

By now you’ve probably read plenty about congressional Republicans’ latest struggle session against Anthony Fauci—the mean-spirited publication of his COVID-era diary, the barrage of ridiculous and misleading questions at his Senate hearing, the crude spectacle of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeting a photoshopped image of himself clapping the doctor in handcuffs.

Yesterday, though, my attention was captured by a far smaller, sadder side plot in the Fauci affair spotlighted by NOTUS—one involving Katie Miller.

During Trump’s first term, Miller was a senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and therefore a close colleague of Fauci’s on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, which Pence chaired.

From his journal entries, it’s clear that Fauci quickly took a liking to Miller, whom he viewed as a bright young colleague and for whom he developed an almost grandfatherly affection. “Katie Miller is great (tough, smart, but great),” he wrote in March 2020. “Katie Miller and I laugh at each other in the Sit Room,” he wrote two months later.

The work of grappling with a brand new, barely understood pandemic was stressful, both professionally and personally—after all, the task force could get the virus too. At several points, Miller leaned on Fauci for medical advice. “I am calling Katie frequently to check on her couple times per day,” Fauci wrote after Miller tested positive for COVID in May 2020. “She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone.”

This was still awfully early days in the pandemic, when little was yet known about the relative risks COVID presented to various groups. Think of how genuinely terror-stricken Miller must have been. Think of how reassuring it must have been to have America’s top infectious-disease expert on hand not just to advise her, but to show personal concern for her physical and mental health. Miller, NOTUS reports, went back to Fauci repeatedly for medical advice throughout the pandemic: later that year when her husband tested positive for COVID, and again when their newborn experienced an unrelated medical episode. In the latter instance, Fauci records, he called the baby’s doctors directly to ensure she was getting good care.

Miller purports to feel differently now. “Dr. Fauci was neither my friend nor my doctor, but a work colleague who weaponized my pregnancy and child for his gain to aggrandize himself,” she wrote on X yesterday. “As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I can say with certainty after witnessing his con close up this man should be in prison. Justice for the American People.”

Miller’s claim here—that she was only relying on Fauci’s pro bono medical advice to “keep her enemies closer”—beggars belief. Nor does her explanation of his behavior make a bit of sense: Apparently, he “weaponized [her] pregnancy and child” to “aggrandize himself” by . . . showing concern for her well-being and going out of his way to help her out from time to time. And he kept it all private even as the Millers and the rest of the Trump movement turned him into a bogeyman. Sinister!

Share this story with someone who opposes MAGA, or just likes a good character drama.

Still, it’s easy to see why Miller is twisting herself in these sorts of knots. Fauci has become one of the MAGAsphere’s chief villains, while she’s become one of its influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers and an odd soft-focus podcast aimed at MAGA moms. The ecosystem she’s chosen to live in is one dominated by political paranoia and intramural accusations of secret disloyalty. Fauci’s diary drop must have been a nasty shock. What if some clout-chasing rabble-rouser used it to try to expose her as some sort of Deep State plant? Better to get ahead of the accusations by cooking up some ridiculous “cover story” for associating with Fauci—and to call for his jailing too, just to be on the safe side.

Now, of course, Miller does a lot of things that I personally find a little difficult to wrap my head around. This, after all, is a woman who has tried to get the FBI to criminally investigate her neighbors. This is a woman who once lost her cool in a TV debate and started threatening her interlocutor with deportation. This is a woman who married Stephen Miller.

Still, it’s interesting to see a human side of Miller emerge in Fauci’s diary entries—and incredibly depressing to see her treat that human side as a four-alarm PR fire. What a bummer way to make a living, swimming in this revolting internet ecosystem. Hard to imagine she’s having a lot of fun.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Health, Medicine, Science
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