A federal judge on Monday found that Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was filed for an improper use and referred his lawyers to disciplinary review over the $10 billion complaint.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, in a highly critical ruling, said that Trump and his lawyers manipulated the court system by suing a federal agency that is under Trump’s control. This breaks rules that require that parties in lawsuits have adverse interests.
The settlement granted Trump immunity from audits and was the segue into the $1.776 billion slush fund referred to as the Anti-Weaponization fund for Trump allies to felt that they had been unjustly persecuted by the government. A number of January 6 rioters were eager to sign up for compensation.
Though Judge Williams didn’t vacate the deal, she said that the government could not claim that the settlement was the result of a valid legal process.
“Whether Executive Branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax monies for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this Court,” said Williams, an Obama appointee. “The question is whether the Parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding ‘no.’”
The ruling comes as no surprise, as last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked the settlement after one of the prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 cases and others sued to block the fund. Simultaneously, Judge Williams opened an inquiry based on a request filed by 35 federal judges to review whether the case was a manipulation of the judicial process.
