President Donald Trump on Friday appealed a federal judge’s blistering order finding that he filed a bad-faith $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in order to reach an advantageous settlement, according to court filings.
The notice of appeal in US District Court in Miami was made public hours after Trump vented frustration that the $1.776 billion “lawfare” fund created as part of that settlement had been scrapped. Trump, two of his adult sons, the Trump Organization and two of their attorneys said in a joint filing that they are appealing Judge Kathleen Williams’ order to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
“They’ve agreed to not have a fund. But there are a lot of people that are very upset about it,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday afternoon. “The fund is dead, but, you know, I wish it weren’t,” he added, before complaining about supporters he said had been mistreated by federal law enforcement.
Williams ruled on July 13 that the lawsuit, ostensibly stemming from the leak of Trump’s tax returns by a former IRS employee years earlier, was in fact brought to provide “judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” That settlement involved Trump and his co-plaintiffs dropping the suit in exchange for the Justice Department creating a $1.776 billion fund to pay people who claimed to be victims of government lawfare. It also barred the IRS from enforcement actions related to the past federal tax returns of Trump, his family members and related entities.
Williams imposed non-monetary sanctions, including referring one of Trump’s attorneys, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for potential disciplinary action, barring another lawyer, Daniel Epstein, from the southern Florida federal court for one year, and prohibiting the plaintiffs from referring to the “settlement agreement” as evidence that a settlement had been reached. Her order did not explicitly void the settlement itself.
The fight has spilled into the Senate, where Trump’s attorney general nominee Todd Blanche is in limbo as a handful of Republican holdouts, including Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, seek written confirmation that the fund is defunct. Blanche, in prior Senate testimony, would not rule out that some of the money could go to people charged with assaulting police officers during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, whom Trump has pardoned. In a Truth Social post Friday, Trump defended payouts, writing: “I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!”
A Justice Department spokesperson responded to Williams’ order at the time by insisting: “There was no collusion in this case, and the partisan judge who speculated otherwise has disregarded decades of precedent.” Trump’s legal team repeated a statement declaring that “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
The appeal sets up an 11th Circuit review of a case that has become a flashpoint over the limits of executive settlement power, the independence of the IRS and the fate of a fund that has helped stall one of Trump’s top nominations.
Sources: CNBC, Politico, USA Today, Law360
Author: USA Desk
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