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MIAMI (CN) — In a stunning rebuke, a Florida federal judge lambasted President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and voided the settlement agreement between the agency, the president and his attorney general, accusing them of trying to “manipulate the judicial process.”
In her ruling Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams characterized the lawsuit as “collusion” between the executive branch agencies in order to secure immunity for Trump and his family from past tax audits and create a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund meant to compensate people wrongfully targeted by the government. The fund received immediate bipartisan pushback from those concerned the fund could compensate criminals convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, and the Justice Department subsequently scrapped plans for the fund.
“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.
Williams, a Barack Obama appointee, also recommended sanctions against Trump’s lead counsel, Florida-based attorney Alejandro Brito.
Brito did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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. Trump sued in his personal capacity and not in his official capacity as president, but early in the case Williams questioned the appropriateness of a president suing an agency he controls.
Trump dropped the suit in May, but a myriad of Democratic lawmakers, watchdog groups, state attorneys and judgesasked the judge to probe “egregious misconduct” and “fraud on the court” by Trump. Williams re-opened the case to scrutinize the settlement agreement.
“In abdicating its responsibility to zealously defend the interests of the United States, the government entered into a ‘settlement’ that deviated from its litigation posture in similar actions, disregarded DOJ policies, and accomplished objectives beyond those authorized, as well as those specifically prohibited, by law,” the judge wrote.
Trump’s lawsuit came after Charles Littlejohn, working as a consultant for the IRS, obtained the tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, including Elon Musk and Florida Senator Rick Scott, and leaked them to the press. The subsequent reports in the The New York Times and ProPublica found the country’s richest people paid little to no income tax.
In 2023, the Justice Department charged Littlejohn with unauthorized disclosure of tax returns. Prosecutors claimed he intentionally applied for a job with the IRS to release Trump’s tax returns because the president was “a threat to democracy.”
Littlejohn was convicted in January 2024 and sentenced to five years in prison. He is currently appealing his sentence.
“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” a spokesperson for Trump said. “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
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