A federal judge is holding up Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department until his lawyers can convince her it’s legal for a president to take his own federal agencies to court for money.
Trump is the ultimate boss of the agencies he’s suing, so there doesn’t appear to be any real “adversary,” as required by courts, noted Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida, where the suit was filed.
In this case, that would mean no one is legitimately arguing on behalf of the public interest. “There must be an honest and actual antagonistic assertion of rights by one individual against another, which is neither feigned nor collusive,” she added, quoting a previous decision.
The parties may not be “sufficiently adverse” to one another for the case to be allowed to continue, she warned. In fact, Trump’s “named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” she underscored in an order Friday.
Williams ordered Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice to submit briefs about why the case should proceed, and set a hearing on the issue for next month.
The judge’s action is the first major glitch in the unusual case. Her order rejected a motion by Trump’s lawyers filed earlier this month requesting an additional 90 days for what they characterized as ongoing “discussions” with the IRS in a bid to settle the suit. Both “sides” had agreed to a delay, the motion claimed.
Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization sued the agencies in January because an IRS contractor in 2019 and 2020 leaked the president’s tax information to the press during his first term. Presidential candidates typically release their tax statements to the public while running for office. Trump did not.
The New York Times reported after the leak that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and none at all for 10 of the previous 15 years.
A group of former government officials last month filed an amicus brief with the court to highlight concerns about the ethics of the president suing his own government for billions of dollars.
The case is “extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics,” the brief warned.
