07/14/2026
BREAKING: In a major rebuke, federal judge torches Trump's IRS lawsuit as a scheme, recommends his lawyers be disciplined
A federal judge just exposed one of the most brazen self-dealing schemes of Trump's presidency, and she's making sure there are consequences.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled Monday that Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns was filed for an "improper purpose," issuing a scathing decision that recommends attorney sanctions and disciplinary action against the lawyers who brought it.
Think about what this lawsuit actually was. Trump, as president, sued the IRS, an agency he effectively controls. He was suing himself, and the judge saw straight through it.
The suit ended in May with a settlement that created a $1.776 billion fund, money from American taxpayers, meant to compensate Trump's allies, along with immunity from tax audits. The fund has since been abandoned, but the scheme itself is now on the record in a federal courtroom.
Judge Williams did not mince words.
"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," she wrote.
Read that again. A sitting federal judge just said, in writing, that the president of the United States tried to use her courtroom to launder legitimacy onto a scheme handing billions in taxpayer money and audit immunity to his own allies.
And she is not letting the lawyers who enabled it walk away clean. By recommending sanctions and disciplinary action, Williams is sending a message to every attorney who signs their name to Trump's schemes: the courts are not a rubber stamp, and your license is on the line.
Time and again, when other institutions have bent, judges have held. Judge Williams just proved it once more, and every taxpayer in America is better off for it.
