The end has begun for Donald Trump’s universally reviled $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund, and now it’s only a matter of time before the whole absurd construction collapses under its own corrupt stupidity.

Late Friday, federal District Court Judge Kathleen Williams – who holds direct control over the sham lawsuit that started this misadventure – issued a four-page order that made clear she’s going to double back and fix the mess she enabled.

It started in January 2026 when Donald John Trump (the private individual) sued the IRS (under Donald John Trump, President). Trump (the plaintiff version) claimed entitlement to the modest fee of $10 billion to compensate for a leak of his tax returns in 2019 and 2020. Curiously, Trump waited six years to bring the case, until he had regained control of the federal government and the putative defendant agency.

The matter was assigned to Judge Williams, a longtime public defender appointed to the bench by Barack Obama in 2011. In late April, she expressed concern about whether the case was a sham intended to satisfy the legal requirement that a party must file a formal claim before tapping into federal funds designated to compensate those who have been genuinely harmed by the government. The Judge noted that the lawsuit involved the same party (Trump) on both sides, and raised concerns about whether the case might be “collusive.” Gee, Your Honor, you think? What tipped you off – Trump’s public declaration upon filing the complaint, “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself”?

Weeks later, both Trump-controlled parties tried to pull the plug on their own case. In May, the litigants notified Judge Williams that they had reached a settlement pursuant to which Trump wished to dismiss his case against the Trump IRS. The Judge agreed, with a note of reluctance, to close out the case with prejudice – meaning it could not be reopened, absent extraordinary circumstances. Vaguely detecting something awry but lacking the will or sensibility to do anything about it, the judge noted that the parties had not submitted the details of their agreement and reminded the Justice Department of its obligation to ensure the “fair administration of justice.”

That dismissal cleared the way for the settlement, and mayhem ensued. Days later, the public learned that the bizarre deal included creation of a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund, to be administered by five cronies chosen by Trump’s sycophantic acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (plus a bonus free pass for Trump, his family, and his companies on any tax shenanigans they’d committed up to 2026). The designated taxpayer money would pay off violent January 6th rioters and pretty much anyone else deemed by Trump’s DOJ to be a victim of an unfair political prosecution. The fund would remain operative, conveniently enough, until December 15, 2028, just as the Trump administration will be packing its bags. (Quick math: if we assume roughly 2,000 claimants – 1,600 January 6th defendants plus other assorted miscreants seeking to feed at the trough – the average payout from the fund would amount to… $888,000.)

Pretty much everyone promptly and appropriately lost their minds at the sheer grift of it all. Even Senate Republicans turned on the boss and Blanche. For reference, this is largely the same group of politicians who voted not to convict Trump after January 6th. They can conjure some way to justify almost anything – but not this.

Despite bipartisan outrage over the slush fund, there was no obvious way out. Several well-intentioned plaintiffs, including police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th and an anti-Trump advocacy group, filed lawsuits. While those claims raise perfectly valid objections to the fund, the plaintiffs seemingly lack legal “standing” – meaning they can’t realistically show they’ll sustain direct, concrete injury causally linked to the conduct at issue. It’s fine to be outraged at some government scheme or to note that it’s corrupt and wasteful and stupid. But standing is a technical threshold requirement, and merely being a ripped-off taxpayer or an influential interest group or even a hero cop just doesn’t cut it.

But then, a breakthrough: a group of 35 former federal judges came up with an end-run. The ex-jurists filed an amicus (friend of the court) motion gently informing Judge Williams that she might have screwed up by agreeing to dismiss the case to facilitate the settlement and laying out a legal roadmap to double back and reopen it. The judges weren’t seeking to file or join a case as parties, so standing was no impediment; they merely offered friendly professional advice to a former colleague. The ex-judges explained to Judge Williams that under somewhat obscure rules of law and procedure, if she finds she has been deceived by the parties and that the settlement was actually a “product of collusion,” she can reopen the case and shut down the whole slush fund mess borne of the settlement.

As David Lat notes in his Original Jurisdiction Substack, the motion drew criticism from conservatives that former judges should not “be trading on the prestige of their former office for this kind of lazy partisanship.” However fair that critique may be, their gambit worked. Plainly grateful for the lifeline, Judge Williams grabbed firm hold of it with her Friday ruling. The judge, suddenly emboldened, noted that the former judges characterized the settlement as “a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court,” that she holds the power to “investigate serious misconduct” around the case, and that if a party files a lawsuit for “an improper purpose,” a judge can right the wrong.

Technically, Judge Williams’s ruling is preliminary. She has given the Trump team two weeks to respond to the allegations of collusion and misconduct. But the tone, and the eventual outcome, are unmistakable. This Judge is furious – at getting played by the two Trump parties, at the slush fund itself and the resulting public uproar, and perhaps at herself for previously missing the obvious signs of the scheme unfolding before her.

It’s now plain where this will end. Essentially everybody except Trump, Blanche, and Stephen Miller despises the slush fund. And Judge Williams surely has no desire to be known as the jurist who facilitated it all, even if somewhat unwittingly. Now she’s been shown a pathway to fix her prior mistake. And it’s a virtual certainty she’ll soon do just that and end this debacle.