An executive that will not write it down

The DOJ has refused a judge's request to commit in writing that it will not move forward with what CNBC describes as an 'anti-weaponization' fund — created as part of a settlement of President Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. I want to be precise: I am working from the lead and headline provided. The specific legal mechanics of this settlement, and whether the fund is properly constituted under statute, are matters I cannot adjudicate from here. But the disposition on display — an executive branch declining a court's request for a written undertaking — that I can speak to directly.

I believed in an energetic executive. I argued for it in the pages of the Federalist with everything I had. Energy in the executive is not a vice; it is, I wrote, the leading character in the definition of good government. But energy is not the same thing as opacity. The executive that will not write down what it intends is not being vigorous — it is refusing the very accountability that separates republican government from arbitrary rule. A strong executive is one that acts decisively within the law and can show its work. An executive that evades a court's written request has confused strength with evasion.

The IRS is not an abstraction. It is the instrument by which the public credit is sustained — by which the Treasury collects the revenue without which no government, however brilliantly conceived, can function. When I built the revenue system of this republic from nothing, I understood that the taxing power and the credit of the nation are bound together. A $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, settled through a fund whose operation the DOJ declines to confirm in writing to a federal judge, touches the integrity of that system. Whether the suit had merit I leave to the courts. What I will not leave aside is the principle that the executive owes the judiciary a candid account of its intentions.

There is a second concern that the lead raises by inference, not by explicit report: the name of the fund itself. 'Anti-weaponization' is a political argument dressed as a legal instrument. I have no objection to a government that pursues those who have genuinely abused public power — I spent considerable energy doing exactly that. But a settlement fund defined by a political slogan, administered without a written commitment to the court overseeing it, is a thing that should prompt scrutiny from every branch. The check is not the enemy of the executive; the check is what makes the executive legitimate.

My recommendation is plain. The DOJ should provide the written assurance the judge requested. Not because the court demands submission, but because a government confident in the lawfulness of its actions has no reason to refuse. Transparency costs an honest executive nothing. It is only the executive with something to hide that fights the paper trail. Write it down — and let the republic judge.