Dead Patriots Society

May 18, 2026

Hon. Todd Blanche 

Acting Attorney General 

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

950 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. 

Washington, D. C. 20530 – 0001 

Dear Acting Attorney General Blanche: 

I have just read the Associated Press story about the proposed settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service which creates a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” the purpose of which you have characterized as allowing people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes to apply for payouts, creating “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” While you indicate that the purpose of the fund is to “right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” it is far less than clear what “this” refers to. The article speculates that the fund will be available to, for instance, “compensate” those who were indicted, pled guilty to and/or were convicted following trial, and sentenced with respect to their activities on January 6, 2021, as well as others who, on the basis of criteria unexplained, were somehow victimized by your department before your arrival. 

The absurdity of the creation of this fund, and the unethical nature of your continuing personal involvement in this matter, is evident on every possible level. 

First, you should not need me to tell you that you, personally, are hopelessly and irrevocably conflicted in this matter. You personally (and quite ably) represented Donald Trump in the case brought by the State of New York, in which he was convicted of 34 felonies. However, after he was elected in 2024, you joined the Department of Justice, and now have been designated as the Acting Attorney General.  As such, it is your department’s duty to defend the Internal Revenue Service against President Trump’s, as well as other members of his family’s, preposterous charges arising out of the unauthorized release of his tax returns – a release that every single president and presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has done entirely voluntarily. You have now clearly allowed your ongoing and unquestioning allegiance to your former client blind you to your obligation as the Acting Attorney General to defend the interests of the citizens of the United States, not Donald Trump. In short, you have knowingly and unethically put yourself in the position of trying to serve two masters. For all their faults, both your predecessors in the first Trump Administration, Jeff Sessions and William Barr, understood the distinction between being Donald Trump’s political supporter and cheerleader, or personal attorney (“Where is my Roy Cohn?”), on the one hand, and the Attorney General of the United States on the other. The same, of course, cannot be said of your immediate predecessor, Pam Bondi. 

Second, assuming the AP’s speculation is correct, you and your department are now and will remain in the absurdly conflicted position of suggesting that prosecutions which were meticulously investigated, indicted, prosecuted, settled and/or tried by the Department of Justice, and resulted in sentencings by federal judges, somehow, some way, in some delusional understanding of reality, amounted to a “weaponization” of the DOJ. I am sure you understand that a huge hurdle in a large percentage of those cases will be the statements made in sentencing by those convicted of federal crimes, when they acknowledged their guilt of the charges on which they had been indicted, expressed remorse, wished they “had it to do over again” etc.  It will be an absurd spectacle to hear those January 6 defendants claim that they were somehow misled, or more likely, simply lied to the federal judge who was about to sentence them, and really ought to receive money for all that they have been through. 

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the damage which you are doing to the integrity and credibility of the Department of Justice may never be undone, either in the eyes of the federal judiciary, or the public at large. Nothing is more common in a criminal courtroom than that a defendant believes that they are unjustly accused. When that defendant has the head prosecutor (you) absurdly suggesting that their prosecution was motivated by the department’s bias against your true client (Donald Trump), and that the crimes they committed on January 6, and subsequently solemnly admitted to in open court, were somehow based on something other than the facts and the law, that is damage that will take generations to repair, if it ever will be. 

It is one thing for a man so purposefully uneducated in legal matters as Donald Trump to claim to believe that the insurrection on January 6 simply amounted to “patriots” enjoying a “day of love,” the several resulting deaths notwithstanding, while a single photograph of seashells arranged on a seashore amounts to a threat to his security. It is quite another for you, a law school graduate, to labor under the same preposterous delusion.  If you have no better judgment than that, you must immediately remove your name from consideration for appointment as Attorney General of the United States. At a bare minimum, you must immediately recuse yourself, and your entire department, from any further involvement with a so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The stain of your continued involvement with this matter, and with the Trump Administration as a whole, will follow you for the rest of your legal career. 

Very truly yours, 

Ross B.H. Buchanan 

Denver, Colorado