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I don’t often say this about a 56-page court ruling, but there are so many satisfying passages in U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ smackdown of President Trump’s flagrantly unethical lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Her ruling has been described as “blistering,” “stunning,” “scathing” and “damning.”
You can almost picture Williams’ revulsion at the audacity of one of Trump’s most glaring — and unconstitutional — attempts at self-dealing. Her disdain for the president’s lawyers, including Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, is so great that she not only chastises them, but refers them to their various home bars for possible sanctions.
As you recall, in January, Trump and his sons sued the federal government for $10 billion, claiming they’d been irreparably harmed by the 2019 leak of their corporate and personal tax returns. (Nothing that a cool $10 billion couldn’t assuage!) Even though a third-party contractor was responsible and is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for the theft, the Trumps blamed the IRS, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.
But the IRS and Treasury Department, as well as the Department of Justice, which would defend the government against Trump’s lawsuit, are all part of the executive branch. And because Trump is the head of the executive branch, he is the plaintiff and, effectively, the defendant. (Reminds me of that famous scene in “Chinatown” in which Faye Dunaway reveals her family’s dark secret to Jack Nicholson: “She’s my sister and my daughter!”)
You don’t have to be a lawyer to know the same person can’t be on both sides of a lawsuit.
The Constitution is clear on this point: If you’re going to file a federal lawsuit, you’d better have a real adversary. It’s called the “case and controversy” doctrine. In April, Williams ordered both sides to explain themselves.
Then in May, two days before their briefs were due, the Trump Department of Justice announced that the case had been settled. No briefs required! Trump would receive an apology, and the government would establish a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate victims of government “lawfare.” This was widely seen as an attempt to funnel money to bad actors like the miscreants convicted of crimes for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Also, Trump and his sons would receive sweeping immunity from IRS audits of past tax returns.
The backlash was intense and bipartisan, and Blanche quickly announced that the fund was dead. (Could it ever rise from the grave like a zombie? Unclear.)
Dozens of outraged former federal judges filed a motion asking Williams to reopen the case. The entire smelly thing, they wrote, was “a fraud on the court.”
Williams, appointed to the federal bench by President Obama in 2010, granted the motion. She said she wanted to investigate whether the settlement had been “premised on deception,” and ordered the parties — Trump on one side, Trump essentially on the other — to explain to Williams exactly why the attorneys involved shouldn’t be punished for creating a sham legal case. They could not make a cogent argument.
On Monday, Williams released her ruling, striking the settlement down. The lawsuit, she wrote, was filed “in bad faith for the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative.”
The architect of the sham lawsuit and slimy settlement is Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal attorney and current nominee for U.S. attorney general. In May, Blanche told a Senate subcommittee that he didn’t have to submit the “settlement” to the court because there was no case anymore. Williams disagreed. Blanche’s testimony, she wrote, was “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”
Blanche’s capacity to speak for both sides of the lawsuit, sign a settlement agreement on behalf of all the parties, then repudiate part of the agreement, wrote the judge, “demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout the case.” And, Williams noted, “It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the parties.”
The whole lawsuit, wrote Williams, was “non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper.” In plain English, totally bogus.
“This case,” she noted, “is part of Mr. Trump’s pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes.”
So what kind of punishment should be imposed on attorneys such as Blanche, who blatantly disregard their constitutional obligations in order to curry favor with the boss and, say, get nominated as U.S. attorney general in return?
Williams ordered the court to send her ruling to the State Bar of New York, where more than 100 former federal and state judges have filed a 73-page ethics complaint against Blanche for his involvement in this case, as well as for what they deemed the specious prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, Blanche’s “botched” handling of the Epstein files and his spearheading the “apparent vindictive prosecution” of the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others.
“Since being appointed to serve as Acting Attorney General,” the former judges wrote, “Mr. Blanche has made it abundantly clear that his primary loyalties lie with President Trump and not with the fair and even-handed administration of justice.” Blanche has denied that he has ever acted improperly and derided the letter as a “pathetic stunt conjured up by activist judges.”
During his Senate hearing for his current appointment, Blanche was asked, “Is President Trump above the law?”
“I am not aware of what it means to be ‘above the law,’” Blanche replied, “so I cannot answer that question.”
I’d wager that most of us can tell you exactly what it means to be above the law.
How pathetic that the man who wants to be the country’s top prosecutor cannot.
Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that Judge Kathleen Williams’ 56-page opinion is a rare and “blistering” rebuke, portraying Trump’s $10-billion IRS lawsuit and ensuing settlement as a flagrant, unconstitutional exercise in executive self-dealing rather than a genuine attempt to remedy a tax-return leak.[2][10]
It emphasizes that because Trump, as president, oversees the IRS, Treasury and Justice Department, his attempt to sue those agencies made him effectively both plaintiff and defendant, violating the Constitution’s “case or controversy” requirement that federal courts hear only disputes between truly adverse parties.[2][13][15]
The piece stresses that Williams concluded the lawsuit and settlement were filed “in bad faith” and “for an improper purpose,” describing them as collusive, non-adversarial and designed to “manipulate the judicial process” to create judicial cover for a giveaway to the president and his allies.[2][10][14]
Building on that, the column contends that the centerpiece of the settlement—the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” or “Anti-Weaponization” fund—was widely viewed as a political slush fund aimed at channeling taxpayer money to Trump-aligned figures, including people convicted over the January 6 attack, rather than neutral victims of government misuse.[3][10][11]
The article highlights that, in addition to the fund, the settlement conferred sweeping protections: immunity or near-immunity from IRS audits and enforcement actions related to Trump’s past tax filings, his family and his businesses, reinforcing the view that the deal was engineered to place the president “above the law.”[4][10][15]
It underscores Williams’ finding that government lawyers never meaningfully opposed the suit and that the same inner circle, led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, effectively represented both sides, which the judge saw as proof that there was “never adverseness” between the parties.[2][11][15]
The piece stresses that Williams responded by voiding the settlement, barring any party from using it in future proceedings, and referring Blanche and other lawyers involved for potential discipline by state bar authorities, signaling her belief that this was a “fraud on the court” warranting professional consequences.[1][14][16]
It further notes that more than 100 former judges have filed a detailed ethics complaint against Blanche, accusing the settlement and related conduct of prioritizing loyalty to Trump over the fair administration of justice and citing the IRS case as part of a broader pattern of politicized, retaliatory law enforcement.[12][15]
The column suggests that Blanche’s public defense of his role—including dismissing the ethics complaint as a stunt and refusing to say whether a president can be “above the law”—illustrates a deeper problem: an attorney general candidate unwilling to affirm basic rule-of-law principles even when confronted with a scathing judicial record.[10][11]
Finally, the article situates this episode within what it sees as a long-running pattern of Trump misusing courts and legal institutions for political gain, arguing that the IRS lawsuit is simply the most brazen example of his efforts to turn the justice system into an instrument of personal and partisan power.[10][13][17]
Different views on the topic
In contrast, Trump’s lawsuit and its defenders argue that the core harm was real and serious: confidential tax returns were illegally accessed and leaked by contractor Charles Littlejohn, and the IRS and Treasury had long been warned about security deficiencies yet failed to protect Trump’s data.[9][13]
Trump’s legal team contends that federal law, including provisions on unauthorized disclosure of tax information and the Privacy Act, allows individuals to seek substantial damages when the government fails to safeguard tax records, and they present the $10-billion demand as a statutory claim rather than pure self-enrichment.[5][13]
From the administration’s perspective, the settlement’s “Anti-Weaponization” fund is framed not as a slush fund but as a remedy for those who feel they suffered politically motivated investigations or “lawfare” by previous administrations, with Trump receiving only an apology and no direct financial payout.[3][4][7]
Supporters of the deal highlight that the fund would be administered under Justice Department oversight and structured to compensate alleged victims of government “weaponization,” arguing that this approach addresses broader concerns about politicized enforcement, not just Trump’s personal grievances.[3][4][7]
The Justice Department has stressed in public materials that the controversial addendum limiting IRS actions was intended to bar only certain existing or pending audits and examinations of Trump, his family and businesses, not future tax scrutiny, portraying this as a narrow resolution rather than blanket immunity.[4]
Trump’s allies point out that Littlejohn has already been prosecuted and sentenced to prison for leaking thousands of tax records, including Trump’s, and argue that aggressive litigation and settlement terms are justified to deter future breaches and to signal that high-profile taxpayers are entitled to the same privacy protections as everyone else.[3][5][9]
Blanche and his supporters maintain that his conduct in the IRS case was lawful and within the bounds of his role as a presidential appointee, characterizing accusations of “fraud on the court” and calls for bar discipline as partisan attacks by ideological opponents rather than neutral assessments of professional ethics.[11][12]
Some legal commentators note that courts traditionally grant the executive branch broad discretion to settle civil cases against the government, and they worry that a judge nullifying a negotiated settlement and referring senior officials for discipline could unsettle separation-of-powers norms and make it harder for the government to resolve politically sensitive litigation.[6][8]
Additionally, defenders of Trump’s broader “weaponization” narrative view the fund and related agreements as a necessary corrective to what they describe as years of overreach by federal agencies, asserting that critics focus on Trump’s benefits while overlooking individuals who, in their view, genuinely experienced biased or excessive enforcement.[3][4][7]
Finally, some supporters argue that Trump’s willingness to drop his massive damages claim in exchange for structural changes and an apology demonstrates a focus on systemic reform rather than personal enrichment, and they see Williams’ ruling as discounting those stated goals in favor of a sweeping condemnation of motives.[3][7][13]
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