Judge refers Trump lawyer to Florida bar for discipline
President Trump and his family acted in bad faith in bringing a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled Monday in a 56-page order that also referred one of Trump’s lawyers to Florida bar authorities for potential discipline.
Williams, an Obama appointee in the Southern District of Florida, found that the lawsuit was filed not to vindicate any legal rights but to “manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the Parties were not adverse.” She wrote that the case 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 ruling stems from a lawsuit Trump, his business, and two of his sons filed in January seeking at least $10 billion from the U.S. government over the illegal disclosure of their tax returns by IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, who provided the records to The New York Times and ProPublica. Littlejohn pleaded guilty to a felony and is serving a federal prison sentence.
Rather than contesting the lawsuit, the Justice Department under the Trump administration never formally answered the complaint. In May, Trump withdrew the lawsuit and the administration simultaneously announced an extraordinary agreement: the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and a promise to halt all pending tax audits of Trump, his family, and his businesses. The fund was abandoned weeks later amid bipartisan backlash, including from Republicans who feared it could be used to compensate Jan. 6 defendants. But the no-audit commitment remained in place.
Williams had initially closed the case after Trump withdrew his claims, but she reopened it at the request of a group of 35 retired federal judges who argued that Trump and the government had deceived the court.
In her ruling, Williams said the Justice Department’s conduct was “untenable” and that officials abdicated their responsibility. “It is telling that the DOJ, which is tasked with enforcement of United States law, has remained conspicuously absent and silent when serious questions about this matter have been raised,” she wrote.
Williams referred Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for potential disciplinary action and barred another of Trump’s lawyers, Daniel Epstein, from appearing in the Southern District of Florida for a year. She also referred Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward to the bars of New York and the District of Columbia, where disciplinary proceedings are already underway. Williams ordered the parties to pay the legal fees of the retired judges and other third parties who filed friend-of-the-court briefs.
The judge also ordered that Trump, his family, and the government are prohibited from “using, offering, admitting, or citing” the so-called settlement agreement in any proceeding. She ruled that Trump cannot call the agreement a “settlement” in official proceedings.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said the IRS had “wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization.” The spokesman added that Trump “continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
Lawyers for the retired judges called Williams’s ruling “a resounding victory for the rule of law.”
Brandon DeBot, policy director at the Tax Law Center, said in a statement that while the court’s decision is important, it “does not remove the need for congressional action to nullify the entire deal and to prevent any similar attempts at presidential self-dealing in the future.”
Blanche is scheduled to face lawmakers Wednesday in a confirmation hearing to become permanent attorney general, where the settlement is expected to be a focus of questioning.