Mystery abounds over 'stealthy stunner' in Trump's IRS settlement

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed documents granting President Donald Trump and his family extraordinary immunity from IRS scrutiny — but insists he didn't write them.

Blanche has tried to navigate a narrow path between his role leading the Justice Department and the job that led him there as the president's criminal defense lawyer, but New York Times correspondent Glenn Thrush said his handling of an IRS lawsuit settlement that establishes a $1.8 billion compensation fund for Trump allies has blurred those two irreconcilable roles.

"It was instantly labeled a 'slush fund' by Democrats," Thrush wrote. "The head of one prominent good-government group described the plan as 'one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.'

"Then came a stealthy stunner," the reporter added. "The department inserted a supplement to the fund agreement that granted Mr. Trump, his family and their businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, an extraordinary move that could shield the president from significant financial liability — issued under Mr. Blanche’s signature."

Blanche signed his name to the documents, and he has insisted the settlement is lawful and necessary, but his role in drawing up those terms remains unclear.

"During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, he suggested that Mr. Trump’s 'outside counsel' and department lawyers, but 'not me,' had been involved in drafting the settlement, including the provision shielding the president from IRS scrutiny," Thrush wrote.

If the acting attorney general did not draft an agreement bearing his name — one that delivers sweeping financial and legal benefits to the president personally — then someone else did. The most troubling possibility, legal observers say, is that Trump's private legal team or White House officials effectively wrote Justice Department policy, using Blanche as a conduit to give it official sanction.

That would represent an extraordinary collapse of the boundary between the president's personal interests and the machinery of federal law enforcement — a line that exists precisely to prevent the Justice Department from becoming a tool of personal enrichment or legal protection for those in power.

Blanche has insisted his actions are lawful. But when pressed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen this week on whether he was acting in the public interest or as Trump's personal attorney, Blanche's answer was telling mostly for its defensiveness.

"I'm the acting attorney general!" he shot back.

For now, that appears to be the only answer on offer.