Court Side-Eyes Trump's Plan To Sue Himself And Loot The Treasury
Always be grifting.
Trump’s plan to fleece American taxpayers ran into a tiny speed bump on Friday thanks to Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida. Williams is saddled with Trump’s preposterous trollsuit against the IRS for the wrongful disclosure of his tax returns by a contractor in 2020 … but perhaps not for much longer.
The suit is defective in every respect, particularly the $10 billion damage demand. Trump insists he’s entitled to $1,000 for every click on a New York Times article about the leaked returns — despite the fact that the law specifies that the disclosure must be by an “officer or employee of the United States,” i.e. not a journalist. It’s also time-barred, since the relevant statute requires the victim to file within two years of discovering the breach.
Trump claims he didn’t find out about the disclosure until January of 2024 when the leaker, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced. This is somewhat undercut by his sparklemagic lawyer Alina Habba’s appearance at a plea hearing in October of 2023, where she announced that she was “here on behalf of President Trump who was a victim, as we just heard, of this atrocity.” See also: all those New York Times stories about his family’s finances that ran in 2020 and 2022.
But dissecting the complaint’s deficiencies risks stepping into a world of make believe where this is an actual civil action, rather than a lawsuit-shaped a pretext to allow the president to loot the Treasury. Indeed, Trump himself acknowledged as much just days after he filing his complaint.
“I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he babbled to reporters, adding that “We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care because it's going to go to numerous very good charities.”
Whether “nobody would care” is an open question. On April 17, counsel for Trump and attorneys for the DOJ — but I repeat myself! — filed a joint motion to stay proceedings for 90 days “while the Parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation.” Just as they did in Michael Flynn’s moribund tort claim over the Russia investigation, the government is telegraphing its intent to cut the president a check he could never collect in court.
But Judge Williams refuses to lend her judicial imprimatur to what is effectively the bank teller opening the till and pocketing the cash — or at least, not yet.
Noting that no lawyer for the government has even bothered to enter an appearance and “the only scheduled event at issue is Defendants’ response to the Complaint,” she instead instructed the parties to explain how the court has jurisdiction over a matter in which there’s no actual dispute. Because judges derive their authority from the Constitution, and Article III limits them to adjudicating actual cases or controversies. And kayfabe where the president connives with his employees to pillage government coffers and then demands judicial blessing for naked corruption don’t cut it.
“Typically, adverseness is found in a situation where one party is asserting its right and the other party is resisting,” Judge Williams wrote, observing that no president in history has been more clear that he exerts personal control over every employee in every branch of the federal government — particularly employees at supposedly independent agencies like the Justice Department.
“[T]he Attorney General, has a statutory obligation to defend the IRS when it is hailed into court, but then is ostensibly required by executive mandate to adhere to the President’s opinion on a matter of law in such a case,” she continued. “This raises questions over whether the Parties here are truly antagonistic to each other.”
In plain English, the court is ordering the parties to explain how there can be adversity when Trump is both the plaintiff and defendant. As she points out, even as Trump insists he’s suing in his personal capacity, the case is captioned “President Donald J. Trump” and refers to him by his official title throughout.
In the past, conservatives decried so-called “sue-and-settle” agreements as a tool to enact environmental policy via sham lawsuits without buy-in from Congress. But once they took the House, Senate, and White House, they changed their tune. Two weeks ago, the FTC simultaneously “sued” various advertising trade groups for violating antitrust law by advocating for brand safety standards that make Elon Musk mad (light paraphrase) and docketed a stipulated settlement. In June, the Justice Department sued Texas over its policy of providing in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants. Just six hours later, Judge Reed O’Connor approved a “settlement” zeroing out a duly enacted provision of Texas state law.
Both of these cases were filed in the Northern District of Texas, guaranteeing they’d draw conservative judges who have become an effective rubber stamp for Trump DOJ shenanigans. The ploy works less well in other courtrooms, even those presided over by his own appointees. In the Eastern District of Texas, the Trump administration hoped to nullify the Johnson Amendment, which bars churches from political endorsements as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status. The complaint was filed in the waning days of the Biden administration, but once back in the White House, Trump’s DOJ moved quickly to grant the plaintiffs’ wish — effectively transforming it into a sue-and-settle case. But Judge J. Campbell Barker rejected the ploy, dismissing the complaint for lack of jurisdiction, since there’s no actual dispute when both parties are on the same side and agree on the remedy.
It would appear that Judge Williams is preparing to do the same. She’s given the government and Trump until May 20 to explain how they’re actually adverse. And if there’s no justiciable conflict, then the court can’t approve a “settlement.”
By the logic of such a ruling, any lawsuit filed by the sitting president against his own government is definitionally non-justiciable. Or, at the very least, this president can’t sue the government, since he’s burned down every firewall and insisted that he has the right to control every organ of the executive branch. If Trump is the government, he can’t sue himself and claim that the lawsuit is anything other than a sham.
But getting tossed out of court can’t ultimately preclude a settlement. Trump could simply order the IRS to cut him a check, as he seems likely to do with the administrative claim he filed demanding $230 million for “abuses” he suffered during the stolen documents and election interference cases. The only question is whether he’ll have the fig leaf of a federal judge blessing his settlement with himself. The cost to the taxpayer is the same, but this way would at least spare the judiciary from sullying itself with his flagrant self-dealing.
Or, if Judge Williams dismisses the case, Trump can always refile it in the Northern District of Texas and get one of his buddies to sign the permission slip.