A federal judge ruled that President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS surrounding his leaked tax return was filed for an “improper purpose.” The judge also referred one of Trump’s attorneys for review and blocked another from acting in the case for a year.
The case comes as Trump sued the IRS, later agreeing to drop his lawsuit upon the creation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche has since said that plans for the fund were tossed after it was blocked by a court.
Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida found that the case 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.” Had President Trump “brought this lawsuit in a timely fashion while he was a private citizen,” the case might have been resolved “in a 109-day time span,” she argued.
“But that is not what happened,” Williams wrote. “Instead, President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer, and the former lawyer of persons who are putative beneficiaries of the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ to prominent positions in the DOJ.”
“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,” the judge wrote.
“In sum, the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail,” Williams added.
President Trump filed his $10 billion lawsuit earlier this year, alleging that the leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”
