Wait, what was that?
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, announced today that the Justice Department was withdrawing the $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, supposedly the result of the settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against his own Treasury Department. “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told lawmakers during a congressional hearing.
First of all, GOOD!, but second and most importantly, how in the wide, wide, world of sports did anyone think this offensive, conflicted, half-baked, stupid idea would be anything but condemned, attacked, ridiculed, mocked and ultimately blocked in the first place?
Any idiot could have figured out how unethical this thing was, so it should have been laughed out of the room the second it was suggested. I’m certainly any idiot, and I wrote three posts pointing out what shouldn’t have had to be pointed out at all. Here, I wrote in part:
“[T]his deal stinks, and should be challenged ethically if not legally. The whole Justice Department and the Treasury Department too had irresolvable conflicts, and should not have been allowed to make a settlement with their own boss.”
Here, I wrote in part,
“If you can process this whole astounding ethics debacle and come out anything but but disgusted and disillusioned, you apparently are capable of rationalizing anything…How can anyone defend any of this?…It needs to be widely condemned and stopped.”
And finally, I wrote here,
“I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”
This conclusion didn’t require an ethicist, or any special expertise, or an IQ above 100. So how did this outrageous thing get to the public announcement stage? The fact that it did should shake public confidence in the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the IRS, President Trump, Vice-President Vance and the entire White House staff. Did no one have the sense God gave a mushroom to tell everyone involved in this fiasco, “That’s ridiculous! It will make this administration look foolish, untrustworthy, corrupt and incompetent! It will undermine the President’s authority and the public trust! It will endanger the GOP majority in Congress and be a self-inflicted wound with no counterbalancing benefits! You can’t be this stupid! Come on! Think, dammit!” ???
I realized that Blanch’s statement was a perfect embodiment of Gilda Radner’s iconic catch phrase as addled “Weekend Update” commentator Emily Litella, which somehow had not been listed already in the Ethics Alarms Hollywood clip archive. But do you know what? Most of the 46 clips listed are appropriate to describe some aspect of this aborted, disgusting, self-indicting betrayal of trust. For example, here’s #18:
And #20…
And of course #15…
…as well as…
Let’s tote up all the clips that are directly applicable in one respect or another. We have twenty-seven, more than half: 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38,39, 43, 44, 45, and, of course, 46. This episode was that bad, that unethical, that indefensible, and Ethics Alarms called it immediately, or as Fredo said in #16,
When Trump and Company do things this reckless and unethical, it humiliates everyone who try to oppose the Trump Deranged.
You know. Morons.
Ethics Alarms 
I actually liked the idea of a fund by the Trump administration to make the victims of Democrat lawfare whole. The Democrat lawfare against American citizens who served their country (Michael Flynn, John Eastman) has cost people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs, and driven some of them out of their professions. Having these costs reimbursed from his fund is a belated form of justice. The lawfare by the Democrats is the real unethical thing that triggered the creation of this fund. Let’s call it the anti-weaponization fund because that is he official name; calling it a slush fund is spiking the ball. The article below by the Federalist shows the intended use of the fund. This is not about enrichment of Donald Trump himself.
https://thefederalist.com/2026/05/29/two-lives-upended-by-vindictive-prosecutors-underscore-the-need-for-anti-weaponization-fund/
Now if this fund is politically unfeasible, or is stopped by the courts, that is a political risk. I am not blaming Trump for trying and being creative in finding defenses against Democrat lawfare. Realpolitik is the art of the possible, prioritizing practical and worldly objectives over ethics, morals, or ideological principles. That is precisely the problem I have with John Thune, Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis who always prioritize rules, principles, decorum, comity over actually getting things done for the good of the country, with as result that the Democrats are eating their lunch. What we need are politicians who are willing to break the rules for the good of the country, like Donald Trump.
Getting the fund by settling a losing lawsuit with his own Departments is per se unethical, and the epitome of self-dealing. That there would be some just awards from such a fund (if fairly administered) doesn’t change the essential wrongness of its creation.
How certain is it a losing lawsuit? Sure he may not have gotten 10 billion but he may have gotten something if he can prove that the lawfare was designed to harm him financially and politically and would have not otherwise occurred had he been a dutiful Democrat as he once was.
I don’t like the appearance of impropriety but I find the pearl clutching a bit disingenuous when there is a taxpayer provided slush fund to compensate persons sexually abused by members of Congress. I also don’t hear any cries to release those records either.
I’m all in favor of creating a slush fund to benefit Republicans and Republican causes. The Democrats have been creating such slush funds for years, and there’s long-established precedent for how to do so. That’s one more reason why this Trump slush fund was unethical: It was incompetent. All they had to do was find some loyal Republican plaintiff – other than the President himself – to file a class-action suit in a friendly court and enter into a collusive settlement to set up the slush fund. It’s almost as if Trump’s people wanted to fail.
I come at this from an entirely different perspective because I personally know someone that’s currently suffering from ongoing lawfare from the political left and it’s literally destroying all aspects of his professional life and wiping our all the money he had for retirement.
These people that are being attacked with lawfare from the political left need money, lots of it, to fight off the morally bankrupt leftist prosecuting hounds in court, it just can’t be taxpayer money that helps them.
Surely you have not forgotten about Kevin Clinesmith.
There are no more ethics, only suggestions.