{"id":320,"date":"2026-07-14T10:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2026-07-14T10:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:41:09","slug":"the-courts-wont-give-cover-to-trumps-irs-self-dealing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=320","title":{"rendered":"The courts won\u2019t give cover to Trump\u2019s IRS self-dealing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams was skeptical. The case before her purported to be between the Internal Revenue Service and a group of private citizens harmed by a leak of their tax returns. The eye-popping $10 billion in relief they were seeking was wild on its own. But among the plaintiffs was President Donald Trump, who oversees both the IRS and the Justice Department lawyers who would be defending the government\u2019s interests. Or rather they should<\/em> be defending the government\u2019s interests \u2014\u00a0because as Williams determined in a scathing ruling Monday, there was never any real conflict for her court to adjudicate.<\/p>\n

Read more Marco Rubio is turning Venezuela into a colony<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, as Williams noted in her 56-page order, Trump effectively controlled both sides of the lawsuit at all points, rendering it ineligible for relief from the court system.<\/p>\n

The \u201csettlement,\u201d which authorized a $1.776 billion slush fund and granted amnesty to the president and his family from IRS audits, including any that may have already begun on tax returns for last year, was already the most likely outcome before a single brief had been filed from the defendants. In her total rejection of the case, Williams has rightly refused to allow America\u2019s courts to be a fig leaf for Trump to enrich himself and his allies.<\/p>\n

For starters, the timing was all wrong. Trump and his fellow plaintiffs claim they were harmed when an IRS contractor stole and leaked their tax records to the press. The contractor was charged in 2023, starting a two-year clock for civil suits to be filed. But the lawsuit against the IRS wasn\u2019t filed until Jan. 29 of this year, three months after the time limit to file such a case had passed. But at no point, Williams noted in her decision, did the Department of Justice ever call out that discrepancy. In fact, there was never much indication that the Justice Department intended to mount a defense in the case.<\/p>\n

The suit\u2019s very existence is made more absurd when you consider the administration\u2019s adherence to the \u201cunitary executive theory,\u201d which denies that any federal agency or official can act outside of the president\u2019s oversight. Many of this theory\u2019s supporters \u2014 including numerous Trump advisors \u2014 believe the post-Watergate firewall between the White House and Justice Department should never have been erected. According to by Trump last February, cited by Judge Williams, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has no authority to act outside of what Trump instructs him. In this IRS suit, there was clearly no real desire to put the government\u2019s interests above the boss\u2019 desires.<\/p>\n

By April, Williams wanted answers to a crucial question: Were there even two sides to this case, as is required when appearing before a federal court?<\/p>\n

When the plaintiffs moved to drop the case before filing the briefings she\u2019d requested on the matter, it was suspicious, but out of her hands. Williams noted in the order dismissing the case that because the plaintiffs\u2019 filing \u201cdoes not reference any settlement or include a stipulation of settlement, there is no settlement of record,\u201d but accordingly cancelled all deadlines.<\/p>\n

Only after she\u2019d agreed to dismiss the suit did the Justice Department present the terms of the supposed deal that had been worked out, dodging any chance for the court to review it. The clear hope was that the problem on Blanche\u2019s desk would now go away without forking over $10 billion to Trump directly. Fortunately, even without the massive political headache that the so-called \u201cAnti-Weaponization Fund\u201d caused, a group of former judges swiftly filed a suit asking Williams to re-open the case.<\/p>\n

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Williams complied and on Monday released her determination that this whole mess was never a real dispute and that the lawyers in question had acted improperly. Without two sides, there was no controversy giving the court jurisdiction under Article III of the Constitution, as only one side always controlled the litigation. \u201cThis lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,\u201d Williams wrote, \u201cit was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, Williams noted that it apparent that Blanche was willing to ignore blatant violations of the law to give Trump what he wanted. She pointed specifically to a statute that prohibits \u201cPresident Trump and his lawyers\u2014one of whom was former White House Counsel\u2014from asking for or promoting termination of an audit directed toward him\u201d that Blanche apparently didn\u2019t feel like following, despite his responsibility to uphold the law.<\/p>\n

She likewise found that the lawsuit \u201cmatter was brought for an improper purpose\u2014to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a \u2018settlement\u2019 that had no viable basis in law or fact.\u201d But at no point in her order does Williams attempt to block the IRS from carrying out the supposed \u201csettlement.\u201d That may seem like an oversight, but it\u2019s honestly the correct move given what issues this non-case were meant to resolve.<\/p>\n

As Williams noted:<\/p>\n

\n

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. 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 \u201cno\u201d: the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Williams did<\/em> order sanctions against the lawyers who filed the suit on Trump\u2019s behalf. That included banning all parties from referring to the \u201csettlement\u201d as legitimate in any future legal proceeding. She also ordered copies of her decision to the bar associations in New York and the District of Columbia, where Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward (who also signed off on the \u201csettlement\u201d) are respectively facing disciplinary hearings regarding unrelated complaints.<\/p>\n

Williams provided a forceful declaration that sham lawsuits have no place in the court system, especially<\/em> those that would benefit the president directly. It is a shame though that Williams\u2019 superiors at the Supreme Court have all but ruled out any sort of consequences for this malfeasance reaching Trump. Under any reasonable legal system, the person who stood most to benefit from this fraud of a lawsuit should be able to be held accountable. Instead, we live in the world of inherent presidential immunity, even in instances where he\u2019d hoped to order the government he runs to deposit billions in his bank account.<\/p>\n

Read more MaddowBlog<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,\u201d U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams wrote, \u201cit was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nThe courts won\u2019t give cover to Trump\u2019s IRS self-dealing - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=320\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The courts won\u2019t give cover to Trump\u2019s IRS self-dealing - 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