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It’s shaping up to be a rough week for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Just as he awaits a sure-to-be-contentious confirmation hearing in his quest to secure the top job at the Justice Department, a federal judge has released a scathing assessment of his work on the president’s suit against the IRS. It details Blanche’s blatantly unlawful conflict of interest when he brokered a “settlement” with President Donald Trump; the arrangement, which irked even the most MAGA Republicans, sought to establish a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to pay out the president’s supporters. The deal also included an agreement that bans the IRS from ever auditing Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization over past tax returns. The judge’s conclusion confirmed what we’ve all been thinking: The acting AG and the president’s interests in this case were “one and the same.”

“Indeed, the DOJ seems to have purposefully adopted the strategy of creating a ‘slush fund disguised as a settlement, and then doling the money out to whatever constituency the Executive wants bankrolled,’ ” U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams wrote in an order, released on Monday, breaking down the culmination of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. Filed in January—a few months before the statute of limitations—the president sought $10 billion from the U.S. government over the agency’s leak of his tax returns by a former........

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