Judge Kathleen Williams also took disciplinary measures against two Trump attorneys.
A federal judge ruled on July 13 that President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns was an example of self-dealing that was filed for an “improper purpose.”
The judge also criticized the president’s legal team, referring one attorney for disciplinary review and denying another the ability to act in the case for one year.
An Anti-Weaponization Fund was created as part of the settlement of the lawsuit. Trump agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, provided that the nearly $1.8 billion fund would be established to compensate alleged victims of the weaponization of law enforcement. After opposition arose in Congress, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told a congressional committee on June 2 that the U.S. Department of Justice was scrapping the proposed fund that was blocked by the courts.
In a new order, Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida wrote that the lawsuit “was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a 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,” she said.
The plaintiffs in the case “have no answer for the fact that the lead Plaintiff, President Trump, directs and controls the Defendants,” and this “renders the lawsuit non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper.”
The plaintiffs who brought the case were the president, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the family business, The Trump Organization LLC.
Williams said the plaintiffs acted in bad faith and initiated a lawsuit “to provide cover for a collusive settlement,” and for “improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative” and to obtain “the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”
The lawsuit is “part of Mr. Trump’s pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes,” she said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
