Trump faces trouble in $10B IRS suit
- A federal judge in Miami ordered Donald Trump and the Justice Department to explain why his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury can stay in court. - Judge Kathleen Williams said Trump, as sitting president, oversees the agencies he is suing, raising doubts that the case presents the kind of real adversarial dispute Article III requires. - The challenge lands as Trump and the IRS were already discussing a 90-day pause for settlement talks, putting the case at risk before any damages fight begins. (politico.com)
A federal judge is questioning whether Donald Trump can keep a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service alive while he is president. (politico.com) (abcnews.go.com) U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Trump’s private lawyers and Justice Department attorneys on April 24 to brief whether the case belongs in federal court at all. She set written submissions for May 20 and a hearing in Miami for May 27. (politico.com) (bloomberg.com) Williams focused on a basic constitutional rule: federal courts hear disputes between genuinely opposing sides. In her order, she said it is unclear whether Trump and the agencies he directs are “sufficiently adverse” to each other. (abcnews.go.com) (politico.com) Trump filed the lawsuit on January 29 in federal court in Miami against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department. The other plaintiffs are Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization. (politico.com) (cnbc.com) The complaint says the government failed to protect confidential tax information that Charles Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service contractor, leaked in 2019 and 2020. Littlejohn pleaded guilty and received a five-year prison sentence in 2024. (nbcnews.com) (cnbc.com) The leaked records fed major news reports about Trump’s taxes, including The New York Times report that he paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and no income taxes in 10 of 15 years before 2019. Trump’s lawsuit says the leak caused reputational and financial harm. (nbcnews.com) (politico.com) The case had already taken an unusual turn before Friday’s order. On April 17, Trump’s lawyers and Internal Revenue Service attorneys asked for a 90-day pause so they could try to settle the dispute without prolonged litigation. (nbcnews.com) That request sharpened the court’s concern, because the Justice Department represents the agencies Trump is suing while also serving in an executive branch he controls. Williams pointed to Trump’s own moves to tighten White House control over executive agencies as part of the problem. (abcnews.go.com) Democrats have also seized on the case’s money trail. NBC News reported that lawmakers introduced a bill this week to bar presidents, vice presidents and their families from collecting settlement payments from the federal government. (nbcnews.com) Trump has said he would donate any recovery from the lawsuit to charity. Before any settlement or damages fight can happen, though, Williams wants an answer to the threshold question: whether this is a lawsuit a federal court can hear at all. (nbcnews.com) (politico.com)
