A judge on Friday reopened President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which he and the federal government jointly asked to dismiss, leading to a settlement that created an “anti-weaponization fund.”
Trump initially sued the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.
The Justice Department announced last week that it had resolved the case and, as part of a settlement, would administer a nearly $1.8 billion fund designed to compensate people who claim they were targeted by a “weaponized” justice system. A federal judge on Friday temporarily halted the Trump administration’s efforts to create the fund, which could benefit the president’s allies and people connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Nearly three dozen former federal judges on Wednesday asked the court to reopen Trump’s legal dispute with the IRS, saying the anti-weaponization fund agreement raised questions about whether the lawsuit was legitimate — and whether the settlement process improperly bypassed judicial scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who approved the dropping of the IRS case, said in her order Friday that the judges advanced “grievous allegations that Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed this litigation solely to avoid judicial scrutiny of a lawsuit that ‘was collusive from the start’ and was only filed to provide the imprimatur of legality for an unlawful settlement.”
“A court is empowered to investigate serious misconduct as a collateral issue,” Williams wrote.
She asked Trump and his lawyers to file a response by June 12, detailing their position on the collusion allegations; the assertion that the dismissal was premised on deception by the parties, and whether the court was a “victim of fraud.”