A “deception”
At the same time, a federal judge in Miami reopened the file in the $10 billion dispute between Donald Trump and the Federal Tax Service (IRS). The President decided to drop the charges, in return for the creation of a fund intended to compensate all those who – like him – would have been victims of excessive or arbitrary legal decisions.
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Judge Kathleen M. Williams, appointed under Barack Obama, announces that she will investigate the “allégations graves” according to which the hastily concluded agreement to settle this dispute would have been “based on deception”. She was the one who previously closed the case.
A request from 35 former judges
The judge’s decision follows a petition filed May 27 by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges. THE New York Times states that these judges declared that the agreement raises serious questions about the “sincérité [du Président] towards justice and its manipulation of the judicial system”.
The former judges argue that the President abused his lawsuit against the IRS to obtain “illegal private benefits” for himself and his family, and with a view to creating a fund which would distribute taxpayers’ money”without constitutional or parliamentary authorization”.
Conflicts of interest
Before dismissing the case, Judge Williams wondered about a possible conflict of interest, since the President was both judge and party, the litigant Trump bringing an action against a federal agency under the authority of President Trump.
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When she closed the case, the judge clarified that there was no “official settlement”. The Ministry of Justice then made public the agreement concluded with the President.
Judge Williams wishes to look into the ins and outs of the negotiated agreement. According to the New York Timesshe could notably hear on this subject the officials of the Ministry of Justice who concluded it: the acting minister Todd Blanche and Stanley Woodward Jr., the number three in the ministry.
The IRS could have won the lawsuit
In her order, Judge Williams states that she is “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any matter before it. She asks Donald Trump’s lawyers if he would have reached an agreement with his own government to settle the matter.in order to escape judicial control”.
The 19 from, the New York Times revealed, in an article cited by Judge Williams, that the IRS services had written a twenty-five page report on the legal action brought by Donald Trump.
IRS lawyers noted “flaws” in the President’s complaint and “ont recommended that the Ministry of Justice reject its complaint”. No lawyer from the Ministry of Justice appeared in court to respond to the complaint or to contest it. Instead, the ministry made the agreement, considered extraordinary, with the President.
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The embarrassment of the Republicans
As a reminder, the compensation fund was created in exchange for dropping the charges and appeared as a way to compensate supporters of Donald Trump, starting with those he encouraged to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The amount of the fund, symbolic, owes nothing to chance: precisely 1,776 million dollars (1.53 billion euros), i.e. the date of the founding of the United States of America, whose 250th anniversary will be celebrated on July 4. Donald Trump indeed considers as “patriots” the rioters who stormed the Capitol on the day when senators and deputies were to formalize his defeat against Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.
The creation of this compensation fund caused discomfort even in the ranks of the Republican Party and unsurprisingly outraged the Democratic opposition. Police officers, victims of violence during the assault on the Capitol, took legal action to block the creation of the fund.
