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(CN) — A group of 35 former federal judges from across the country asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to reopen President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and U.S. Department of the Treasury on Wednesday.
In their motion to set aside Trump’s voluntary dismissal of the case, the judges accuse the Trump administration of corrupting the judicial process by announcing a “settlement agreement” that was never brought before a judge or filed in the case.
“Movants are filing this motion because they have dedicated their professional lives to the administration of justice,” the judges wrote in their filing.
“The purported ‘settlement’ that the parties never placed before this court raises profound questions about the parties’ candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system, which threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice,” they added.
The judges asked U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams to reopen the case so the court can inquire into whether the president fraudulently purported to have “settled” the case.
That “settlement” includes $1.776 billion from the Treasury to be handed out by a Trump-controlled, five-person commission to people wrongfully targeted by the government.
“Doing so will allow judicial review of the extraordinary — and historically unprecedented — circumstances presented by this litigation and by the collusive ‘settlement’ that invokes this litigation as the legal justification for its terms,” the judges wrote.
“The court was deceived,” they added.
Shortly after Trump’s suit was ended on May 18, the Justice Department announced its “settlement agreement” establishing an “anti-weaponization fund.”
According to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump agreed, in exchange for the creation of the fund, to drop his lawsuit with prejudice and also withdraw two administrative claims for damages resulting from “the unlawful raid of Mar-a-Lago and the Russia-collusion hoax.”
On the following day, the Justice Department announced it had subsequently agreed to release “any and all claims” that have been or could have been asserted by the government against Trump “or related or affiliated individuals” in connection with any pending matters before the IRS or other agencies or departments.
“Movants submit that this ‘settlement’ is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court,” the judges wrote.
The agreement was not, and never will be, legally justified, the judges argue. They claim the acting attorney general’s order creating the anti-weaponization fund was based on a fraudulent “judgment fund” that is not legitimate.
Trump sued the IRS in January, accusing the agency of not properly safeguarding his financial information and allowing a former contractor to access his tax returns and disseminate them to “leftist media outlets” like The New York Times and ProPublica. The president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined the lawsuit along with the Trump Organization.
“The parties have used this lawsuit — which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the court even had jurisdiction — as a means to allow a ‘commission’ controlled by the president to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the president and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them,” the judges wrote.
They added that Trump has plainly tried to shield his conduct from judicial scrutiny by attempting to prevent the court from ever completing its inquiry into whether his lawsuit was, in fact, an actual case or controversy.
Just before Trump dropped his lawsuit, 93 Democrats in the U.S. House filed their own brief, accusing the president of “undermining the Constitution by bringing this collusive suit.” Watchdog groups and outside lawyers also filed briefs in the case, challenging Trump’s lawsuit as a conflict of interest because the president oversees the IRS.
Last week, a pair of former police officers who clashed with rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, sued to block the anti-weaponization fund, claiming the money will go to Jan. 6 defendants and result in the “public financing of paramilitary organizations” in the country.
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