In response to highly dubious civil lawsuits, the Trump Justice Department has been exceedingly generous lately, agreeing to lucrative settlements with plaintiffs who are politically aligned with the White House. Whether Donald Trump will be among the beneficiaries, however, remains an open question.
A federal judge suggested late last week that the president might have to lower his expectations. Politico reported:
President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns ran into turbulence Friday as a judge ordered a hearing on whether the Constitution allows the president to sue the federal government he oversees.
U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams has asked Trump’s private attorneys and Justice Department lawyers representing the IRS to address whether his control over the government’s actions in the case means it’s the kind of dispute federal courts cannot consider.
“Although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” Williams wrote in a four-page order.
“It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy Article III’s case or controversy requirement,” the judge added, referring to the Constitution.
That might sound a little complicated, but it’s a straightforward legal question: Legal disputes are, by definition, adversarial. If Trump is, for all intents and purposes, both the plaintiff and the defendant, then the case shouldn’t exist, because there are no adversaries.
To recap, during Trump’s first term, a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn gained access to the president’s tax returns and shared the documents that the Republican had been desperate to hide. Littlejohn was caught, charged, convicted and sent to prison.
More than five years later, Trump has decided that the criminal penalty wasn’t enough. He believes the disclosure of the truth entitles him to a $10 billion payout from the federal tax agency, which the president sued in February.
The payout, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent conceded to senators, would come from American taxpayers. And just two weeks ago, Trump administration officials acknowledged in a court filing that it has begun settlement negotiations with Trump’s lawyers.
The skepticism from Williams on Friday suggested those talks might yet be short-circuited.
Writing for MS NOW, columnist Paul Waldman recently explained that the president’s litigation was “so brazen, so shameless, so stunning … that it will stand out in history even in a presidential term drowning in self-dealing.” Waldman added, “This latest act deploys Trump’s favorite financial weapon — the bogus lawsuit — but in a way no one even contemplated before.”
Shortly after his lawyers filed the case, the president told reporters that he assumed “nobody would care” if he received a lucrative payout as part of the frivolous litigation. That payout now appears in doubt. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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