Executive Summary: A federal judge in Miami found
that President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was a sham: because
Trump controls the very agencies he sued, there were never two opposing sides,
just one man on both, using the court to bless a private deal that would have
handed his allies $1.776 billion in taxpayer money and shielded him and his
family from future tax audits. The judge ruled the case was filed in “bad
faith” for an “improper purpose,” and pointed out that the Justice Department,
run by Trump’s own former personal lawyers, abandoned defenses it had won with
in every similar case rather than fight its boss. She refused to let anyone
treat the deal as a real settlement and referred the lawyers involved,
including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, for possible discipline.
I read all fifty-six pages of Judge Kathleen M. Williams’ order so you would
not have to. I am going to hand you her words, not mine, and let you decide who
is telling you the truth. The full order is linked at the end of this article
if you’d like to read it.¹
Suing Yourself For Ten Billion Dollars:
Start with the shape of the thing, because the shape
gives it away.
Trump, in the words of the order, “served as the 45th
President of the United States, and is the 47th President of the United
States.” He sued the IRS and the Treasury Department for “at least
$10,000.000,000.00.” He filed it in what his lawyers had the nerve to call his
“personal capacity,” and later described the case as “ordinary.”
Judge Williams refused to play along. She “decline[d] to
adopt or accept the credulous exercise of divorcing President Trump’s current
job title from an understanding of what happened here.” On the word “ordinary,”
she called it “perhaps the most startling misstatement” in the whole
proceeding, and she wrote, “There is nothing ‘ordinary’ about this case; it is
the very definition of sui generis.”
And here’s why. The defendants, the IRS and Treasury, sit
inside the Executive Branch. The head of that branch is the same man who filed
the suit. The judge walked the chain of command one link at a time. Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessent, who also serves as Acting IRS Commissioner, is in the
Supreme Court’s words “the President’s alter ego.” IRS CEO Frank Bisignano
answers to Bessent. The President removes the IRS Commissioner “at the will of
the President,” and the order points out he “has done so as recently as August
2025.”
Here is the moment the whole thing collapses. Trump’s own
team already told the Supreme Court these officials “unquestionably exercise[]
executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the Chief Executive.”
Judge Williams caught it and held them to their own words. They do not get to
claim total control in one courtroom and real opposition in another. “No person
may sue himself,” she wrote. Trump said the same thing once, about a related
matter, and she quoted it right back at him: “I’m suing myself.”
A plaintiff who controls the defendant is staging a play
for the court. Courts, the judge reminded everyone, “do not engage in the
academic pastime of rendering judgments in favor of persons against
themselves.”
Picture it in one line. A president sued himself and
tried to hand you the bill.
The Dog That Didn’t Bark:
Here is the detail that should put a knot in your
stomach, because it shows this was on purpose.
Every other time someone sued over this same tax leak,
the Justice Department came out swinging. In the Griffin case. In the Safe
Harbor case. The DOJ “zealously defended the government,” fighting the timing
of the claims, fighting the damages, arguing the government was not even the
right target. In the judge’s words, “In every case naming the government as a
defendant, the DOJ engaged in a vigorous defense.”
Then, one sentence later, she drops the hammer: “That is,
every case until the instant litigation.”
In Trump’s case, the government lay down. No answer. No
appearance. No pleading of any kind. For 109 days, she found, “no attorney
representing the United States filed a notice of appearance or any document
indicating the government’s position, interest, or awareness of this matter.”
It gets worse. IRS officials had already written a
25-page memo “that outlined major flaws with Plaintiffs’ claims and listed the
various defenses that could be advanced on behalf of Defendants.” The winning
arguments were sitting in a drawer. The government had the memo in hand. It
folded anyway and put its name to a deal worth $1.776 billion.²
Judge Williams drew the only inference a reasonable
person draws. The government “failed to defend this lawsuit or to respond to
the Court’s jurisdictional inquiry because its position would not withstand
judicial scrutiny and because resolution of the threshold issues identified by
the Court would not have favored its preferred outcome to this case.” You hold
the winning hand and throw the game. The fix is in.
A Settlement Built to Dodge the Judge:
The way they ended the case is its own scandal.
The judge had already spotted the jurisdiction problem
and ordered both sides to brief it. Neither side did. Three days before the
deadline, the parties filed a two-page notice of voluntary dismissal, telling
the court it “automatically divested the Court of jurisdiction” and “no
judicial analysis is appropriate.” Then the DOJ put out a press release with a
“settlement agreement” no judge had ever seen, creating an “Anti-Weaponization
Fund” to be paid out of the Treasury’s Judgment Fund for $1.776 billion.
The day after the dismissal, Acting Attorney General Todd
Blanche went before Congress. Someone asked why the settlement never went to
the court for review. He answered that “there is no judge” because the case had
been dismissed, so there was “no mechanism” for review.
Read how the judge answered that. She was “extremely
troubled.” She called his explanation “at best, misleading and, at worst,
disingenuous.” Then the clean truth: “The Court was available to review any
pleading by any Party at any time during this lawsuit.” If Blanche believed the
dismissal was wrong, “he only had to file an appearance and ask for relief.” He
never did. Review was the one thing nobody in this deal wanted. The dismissal
was the escape hatch.
The Number That Gives It Away:
The payout was set at $1.776 billion. Not 1.7. Not 2. One
point seven seven six!
The law for these tax-leak claims allows “$1,000 for each
act of unauthorized inspection or disclosure.” The judge noted the plaintiffs
“could make no connection between the billions of dollars they sought, and the
recovery authorized under the governing statute.” So where did the number come
from? She did not have to guess. “Even the Fund amount — $1.776 billion —
speaks of a ‘branding’ effort rather than a deliberate and thoughtful
calculation of damages.”
A flag-waving number, built for a headline, stapled to
grievances the deal never even defined. The judge pointed out the words
“Anti-Weaponization” and “Lawfare” were “inchoate,” with no “legal definition…
outside their meaning in political discourse.” This was a slogan with a price
tag, and you were the one on the hook for it.
The Lawyers and Their Conflicts:
This is where it turns from improper to ugly, and where
the order names names.
Look at the signatures. The “settlement” for the
plaintiffs was signed by Daniel Epstein, a former White House Senior Associate
Counsel and Special Assistant to President Trump. Epstein was never even
counsel of record. His promised pro hac vice application never got filed. The
judge “can only surmise that Mr. Epstein was aware that he would never need to
appear and litigate the merits.” There were no merits to litigate.
The “settlement” for the defendants, supposedly the other
side, was signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. and Acting
Attorney General Todd Blanche. Read who they are. Woodward represented January
6 defendants and Walt Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago
classified documents case. Blanche “served as President Trump’s personal
criminal defense attorney” in the Mar-a-Lago case, the federal case charging
Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and the New York “hush money”
case.
Now follow the wire, the way the judge did. The
settlement funds claims “arising from, inter alia, the Mar-a-Lago Documents
Case and the events of January 6, 2021.” Those are the same matters where
these same lawyers represented the people who stood to get paid. In her words,
instead of “either recusing… because of their previous representations or
vigorously defending this lawsuit as required to do so by DOJ policies and
procedures, these lawyers agreed to a ‘settlement’ involving a staggering
amount of money potentially benefitting former clients.”
She grounded it in the rulebook lawyers answer to.
Quoting the commentary to Florida Bar Rule 4-1.11 on government lawyers, she
flagged the danger “that power or discretion vested in that agency might be
used for the special benefit of the other client,” and “[a] lawyer should not
be in a position where benefit to the other client might affect performance of
the lawyer’s professional functions on behalf of the government.” Her line:
“The specter of that risk seems to be present here.”
She added one more fact. Blanche had reportedly been told
to recuse from DOJ matters involving Trump, and a DOJ spokeswoman confirmed he
was “recused from many cases.” In this one, “notwithstanding his prior
representation of President Trump, Blanche did not recuse.”
Breaking The Laws They Swore To Enforce:
The order goes further and points to the actual statutes
and constitutional lines the deal appears to cross.
The Release Order signed by Blanche tried to bar the IRS
from ever auditing Trump, his sons, or their companies. Judge Williams pointed
to 26 U.S.C. section 7217, a law titled “Prohibition on executive branch
influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations,” which makes it
“unlawful for any applicable person to request, directly or indirectly,” that
the IRS “conduct or terminate an audit.” In her words, the statute “prohibits
President Trump and his lawyers, one of whom was former White House Counsel,
from asking for or promoting termination of an audit directed toward him. And
acquiescing to any such demand is wholly incompatible with the duties of DOJ
attorneys… to enforce the law and protect the public interest.”
She flagged the Constitution too. The President’s duty
under Article II to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The
Emoluments limit in Article II, Section 1, keeping a president from taking
extra payment during his term, a line “surely known by former White House
Counsel and the current Acting Attorney General.” As she put it, “No sitting
President has ever sued federal agencies completely subject to his control for
monetary benefits… that inure to him, his family, and associates.” No lawyer in
the case raised any of it on the docket, which she called “a glaring omission
that speaks to the control of the Lead Plaintiff.”
The Tell They Could Not Hide:
If you still need proof the two sides were one side,
watch what happened after the deal.
Blanche later testified the DOJ was “not moving forward
with the fund, period.” A settlement is a contract between two opposing
parties, and one side does not get to erase it alone. As the judge noted, “a
party may not unilaterally repudiate a settlement agreement once it is
reached.” Blanche’s belief that he could speak for both sides, sign for both
sides, then cancel part of it for both sides “demonstrates that there was only
one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case.” Around
the same time, Trump told reporters he did not know if the fund was “fully dead
or just on hold” and would “have to ask the lawyers.” Opposing parties do not
share lawyers, and they do not share the same confusion.
And the detail that says everything: the order notes a
DOJ official “publicly stated that he intended to apply for compensation from
the Fund.” One of the people close to this deal was already reaching for the
payout.
Final Analysis:
Let me tell you where this ends up, and then I’ll show
you exactly why.
That settlement is finished. Not one dollar is getting
paid to anyone. And Trump, his sons, and their companies do not get a permanent
pass on IRS audits. An appeal may happen but Trump and sons will lose.
Here is why:
As of today’s ruling, the “settlement” survives only
as a private piece of paper the parties can no longer call a settlement or cite
in any court; the fund it created has been abandoned and separately blocked;
and the audit-immunity provision remains on paper but rests entirely on a
unilateral DOJ order the judge found directly contravenes a federal statute.
Stripped of the settlement wrapper, that immunity
agreement appears to rest on thin-to-nonexistent consideration flowing from
Trump to the government, though that weakness is arguably the least of its
problems, because the immunity may also fail for the illegality of its subject
matter and for the government’s lack of authority to grant it, and any one of
those defects could sink it on its own.
Trump can appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Eleventh Circuit, arguing that the voluntary dismissal stripped the court of
jurisdiction and that the findings and sanctions were improper, though the
timing may depend on when the order becomes final, since the sanctions amount
is still open. Even then, an appeal faces an uphill climb: Rule 11 and
inherent-authority sanctions are reviewed for “abuse of discretion,” a
deferential standard under which reversing a 56-page order this detailed is
difficult, and pressing the appeal would force the administration to publicly
defend a deal that already drew bipartisan criticism.
Why This Lands on You:
The parties told the judge she had no power left, that
the dismissal stripped her jurisdiction, that “there is no judge.” She answered
that a court keeps the authority to police abuse of its own process, quoting
the Eleventh Circuit: “Without them, abuses of the judicial system would go
unchecked.” She found the plaintiffs “acted in bad faith and for an improper
purpose by ‘collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple
dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement.’” She
found the case “was brought for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of
judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or
fact.” She wrote it flat: the plaintiffs “acted in bad faith.”
Then she acted. She referred Trump’s Florida lawyer,
Alejandro Brito, to The Florida Bar. She barred Daniel Epstein from practicing
in the district for a year. She forbade the parties from ever again calling
this deal a “settlement” in any proceeding. She sent her order to the New York
bar, where Blanche is a member, and the District of Columbia bar, where
Woodward is a member, noting “disciplinary proceedings are currently ongoing”
against them over ethics complaints already filed.
Here is where things stand today, so you have the
full picture. The fund was never actually paid out. After bipartisan blowback
in Congress, a separate federal judge in Virginia blocked it, and the
administration said it was walking away from it. This order goes further and
stops the parties from ever using their private deal as a “settlement” blessed
by a court. One piece of the deal, the promise shielding Trump and his family
from future audits, is the piece the administration has refused to put in
writing that it will drop.
She ended with John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things;
and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our
passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The facts here
are stubborn. A president sued the agencies he runs. His former personal
lawyers, now running the Justice Department, signed the other side of the deal.
They walked away from winning defenses their own colleagues had written down.
They tried to lock in $1.776 billion of public money and permanent immunity for
the president and his family, and then told Congress “there is no judge” who
would ever look.
There was a judge. She looked. She found a case
“resolved” before any real fight happened, a lawsuit that “was never about a
party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute,” and
she named it for what it was, a private giveaway laundered through a federal
court.
The Justice Department works for you. Its job is to see
“that the laws of the United States… be faithfully executed.” Its leaders
treated your Treasury like a personal account, your courts like a rubber stamp,
and you like someone who would never read the fine print. One judge read every
page and said so out loud.
So read this again and remember the one line to carry to
anyone. A president sued himself and tried to mail you the bill. Say it at
dinner tonight. Send this to the person who swears both parties are the
same and none of it touches your life. This reached for your Treasury, your
courts, and the promise that the law lands the same on all of us.
You pay what you owe. You now have proof, in fifty-six
pages, that someone at the top decided he never would. Do not let this become
normal. Talk about it. Share it. Blanche faces the Senate this week for the job of
Attorney General on a permanent basis. Ask the people who represent you where
they stand and make them answer before the next gavel falls!
-Mitch Jackson, Esq.
1 PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, et al., Plaintiffs, v. INTERNAL
REVENUE SERVICE, et al., Defendants.
2 Tony Soprano Called — He Wants His $1.776 Billion Shakedown
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