A federal judge on Monday delivered a two-pronged rebuke to President Trump: She voided his controversial settlement with the IRS, and she referred his attorneys to their respective bars for possible disciplinary action, reports CNBC and Reuters. The scathing ruling from US District Judge Kathleen Williams in Florida stems from a lawsuit Trump filed against the tax agency because his returns were leaked. He eventually dropped the suit, and the resulting settlement shielded him and his family from future tax audits. The settlement also created a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund for others deemed to have been unfairly prosecuted.
The judge, however, called Trump's original lawsuit against the IRS a sham, saying it was filed for "improper purpose" to benefit himself and his administration. "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," the judge wrote, per the AP.
Williams also referred Trump attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar for a disciplinary investigation, and she ordered copies of her decision mailed to the New York state bar, where Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is a member, and to the District of Columbia bar, where Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward is a member. Trump's legal team defended the lawsuit in a statement: "The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people."
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