From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

President Trump withdraws his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax records.

And in exchange, the Justice Department puts nearly $1.8 billion into a fund to compensate

targets of government weaponization.

Plus, the GOP's latest reconciliation bill gets hung up on security funding for Trump's

planned White House ballroom. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We're joined today by my colleague on the journal's opinion pages, columnist Kim Strassel.

IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing and leaking years of tax information.

And the government's failure protect those confidential returns also prompted private lawsuits against the government,

including one filed this year by Donald Trump, his elder sons, and the Trump organization business.

On Monday, however, the Trump's move to dismiss that case, the Justice Department said it had

reached a settlement with them to transfer $1.776 billion into an anti-weaponization fund

that, according to the Justice Department, will provide a systematic process to hear and redress

claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare, unquote. Let's start with a clip of

acting attorney general Todd Blanche

explaining this idea today at a Senate oversight committee hearing. It is true that this is unusual.

That is true. But it is not unprecedented. And it was done to address something that had never

happened again either. So there is an impressive nature of what we did

yesterday in response to to years and years of weaponization, just to correct a few things,

Senator. It's not limited to Republicans. It's not limited to Biden. It's not limited. It's not

limited to the Biden weaponization. It's not limited to the Biden weaponization.

It's not limited to, in any way, scope or form to January 6 or to Jack Smith.

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