A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was a “bad faith” attempt to manipulate the judicial process and barred him and his administration from citing its supposed settlement in any future regulatory or judicial proceedings.
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Monday’s 56-page
The judge wrote that Trump’s “lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights; it was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”
Trump sued the IRS in January over the unauthorized leak of his tax information to the press in 2019. Williams said Trump’s control over the tax agency as president meant that he was effectively on both sides of the litigation, violating a constitutional requirement that parties in federal litigation be adverse to each other.
“And because this fact was so obvious and so insurmountable, the court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” Williams wrote.
The judge said sanctions were merited by the administration’s conduct of the case. She referred Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for consideration of possible disciplinary action. Williams also ordered that copies of her decision be sent to panels conducting ongoing disciplinary probes of Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and Acting Assistant Attorney General Stanley Woodward.
Brito did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesperson also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On May 18, the president said he was dropping the suit in exchange for the government creating a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which many Democrats said would be used to enrich his allies and supporters, including Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters. That part of the settlement was abandoned by the government after bipartisan outcry, but Blanche has said the grant of audit immunity to Trump and his family would remain.
The judge blasted the lawsuit in her ruling, saying it was never about Trump seeking a resolution to a valid legal issue or a factual dispute.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote.
The judge heaped criticism on the Justice Department, which did not respond to the lawsuit in court or have any of its lawyers make formal appearances. Williams said that in reaching the settlement with Trump, it was “abdicating its responsibility to zealously defend the interests of the United States.”
Williams wrote that she was “extremely troubled” by how Blanche had described the proceedings in congressional testimony. She also expressed concern about the role Blanche and Woodward played in approving the deal given their past involvement as defense lawyers in the now-defunct prosecution of Trump and several associates for mishandling classified information.
Trump has nominated Blanche to serve as attorney general and his nomination is pending before the Senate.
Though Williams originally closed the case at Trump’s request, she began reexamining it after a group of
Trump’s lawyers had urged Williams to not reopen the case, saying the lawsuit was not a fraud on the court and Justice Department officials had broad authority to enter into the agreement — even without a lawsuit.
“Based on these bare-bones assertions, they ask the court to wrongly conclude that the entire case was a sham,” wrote Brito. “But none of these facts, individually or collectively, constitute evidence of collusion, much less the clear and convincing evidence required to establish fraud on the court.”
Lawyers who represent the retired judges, including Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and former New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin, said in a statement that Monday’s ruling “is a resounding victory for the rule of law. We are proud to represent these former judges in presenting the arguments that the court adopted.”
The judge also ordered Trump to cover the former judges’ legal bills as an additional sanction, if those lawyers choose to be reimbursed.
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