Trump is becoming a lame duck before the midterms.
A federal judge on Monday nullified
an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns.
The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.
The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.
Amid bipartisan backlash, the acting attorney general,
Todd Blanche, announced the justice department was scrapping the fund, but the tax immunity provisions remained in place.
In her ruling on Monday, Williams, who was nominated to the bench by Barack Obama, said there had never been a genuine controversy in the case – a requirement for any lawsuit – since Trump controlled the treasury department
. She also sanctioned Trump’s lawyers for their conduct before the court.
“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.
“The court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose – to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” she added.
Her ruling blocks both Trump, his sons, and business, and the government from “using, offering, admitting, or citing” anything from the so-called settlement agreement in any kind of proceeding.
The ruling on Monday comes after Williams took the extraordinary step of
reopening the case at the urging of a group of retired federal judges. She previously closed the case after Trump voluntarily withdrew his claims when the agreement was reached.
I am not a legal person but I believe in a litigation case you need "Adverse litigants" Trump boasted loudly that he was actually suing himself
(Federal President vs Federal Revenue) Thus giving the Judge clear evidence that his case had no basis in law.
Trump sued himself and lost! 