Corruption

35 Retired Federal Judges Slam Trump's 'Laughable' Defense of His 'Obviously Collusive' IRS Settlement

The DOJ's unilateral abandonment of the Anti-Weaponization Fund "makes it crystal clear that these parties were never adverse," the former judges argue.

Jacob Sullum | 6.22.2026 2:00 PM

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As President Donald Trump's lawyers tell it, there is "no evidence" that the May 18 "settlement" of his lawsuit against the IRS, which included huge favors for him, his family, and his supporters, was a product of collusion. That position is hard to take seriously, since both sides in the lawsuit were represented by attorneys who worked for Trump, and the president himself has described the cozy arrangement as "a settlement with myself."

In a June 12 brief ordered by Kathleen Williams, the federal judge in Florida who oversaw Trump v. IRS, the president's lawyers improbably maintained that the "settlement" was business as usual at the Department of Justice (DOJ). That brief "only underscores the need to investigate whether the parties have perpetrated a fraud on this Court and corrupted the integrity of the judicial process," 35 former federal judges argue in a response filed on Friday.

Trump sued the IRS on January 29, claiming that an IRS contractor's illegal disclosure of his tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering a plainly preposterous estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of arguing that the contractor qualified as an "officer or employee of the United States"—a point that the DOJ has disputed in other cases involving similar claims.

Despite those manifest legal weaknesses, the DOJ never contested Trump's claims, in sharp contrast with the way it has handled lawsuits against the IRS by plaintiffs who were not the president. That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the case, which pitted Trump against an agency he oversees, represented by DOJ lawyers who serve at his pleasure. Further compromising the DOJ's ability to represent the IRS, an executive order that Trump issued in February 2025 bars the government's lawyers from taking legal positions that contradict the president's.

The situation was so bizarre that Williams questioned whether the case involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed. But two days before the deadline for briefing on that crucial........

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