Federal Judge Blasts Trump For IRS Immunity Corruption
Welp, President Donald Trump’s little reparations fund for MAGA minions pretending to be persecuted may have been permanently shut down, but there are issues regarding the settlement that brought the fund about that need to be addressed, particularly the part where Trump and his family members were granted immunity from IRS investigations. Fortunately, a federal judge is on the case and on Trump’s neck, accusing the president of suing an agency he currently controls for an “improper purpose.”
As we previously reported, in May Trump withdrew a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which he had filed over the leak of his tax returns while he was being investigated by the FBI. The Justice Department announced the settlement included the launch of a now-defunct “anti-weaponization of lawfare” fund, but was less forthcoming about the fact that the agreement also barred all IRS investigations of Trump and his family members for past tax-related complaints.
On Monday, in a scathing decision, a judge not only rebuked Trump and the DOJ for filing the suit, but also referred two of the president’s lawyers for potential disciplinary action.
From the Associated Press:
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump and his lawyers of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests and laying the groundwork for a settlement that granted him immunity from tax audits and created a fund to compensate allies of the president who say they were unjustly persecuted.
The judge stopped short of explicitly voiding the deal shielding Trump from tax scrutiny but said the government cannot claim that the agreement was the result of a legitimate legal process.
“Whether Executive Branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax monies for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this Court,” said Williams, an appointee of President Barack Obama. “The question is whether the Parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding ‘no.’”
It’s like I wrote in our previous report about the settlement: “The leader of the federal government’s executive branch sued a federal executive branch agency. Then, Trump settled the suit with the agency he’s ultimately in charge of, included a fund to pay reparations to his criminally inclined supporters and allies, and secured an immunity agreement for himself and his family members.”
Sometimes the corruption and conflicts of interest that happen at the highest levels of government are subtle. That’s never the case with this administration. After all, this is the same president who became some $2 billion richer last year from his investments in cryptocurrency — which he called “a scam against the dollar” just a few short years ago — after he signed multiple executive orders that were clearly aimed at boosting the cryptocurrency industry.
Anyway, back to Judge Williams’ 56-page ruling.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote. “The President may be the functional ‘dominus litus’ of the Executive Branch, but as a party to a civil suit, he, as well as all the parties and lawyers before a court, are bound by the rules. Ensuring that our courts are used only for the express purpose created by the Constitution is the obligation of every judge and an obligation that this Court must discharge in light of the matter before it.”
According to the Washington Post, Williams referred two of Trump’s attorneys for potential disciplinary proceedings in the state of Florida, where the IRS lawsuit was launched, and ordered that her ruling be sent to attorney oversight bodies in New York and Washington that are already investigating disciplinary claims against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward, the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, both of whom were key figures involved in the settlement agreement.
Look, I’m just going to point out that attorneys flushing their careers down the drain just to do Trump’s dirty work is what brought about the downfall of one Rudy Giuliani, who is still unconscionably loyal to the most brazenly corrupt president in recent history. We can likely expect the same from Blanche and any other legal official caught in the MAGA web, because a cult is going to be a cult.
Sad.
SEE ALSO:
Trump IRS Settlement Grants Him, Family Immunity On Past Tax Issues
Federal Judge Blasts Trump For IRS Immunity Corruption was originally published on newsone.com
