Judge slams Trump's acting AG in 'bad faith' IRS lawsuit | Opinion
Talk about terrible timing. A federal judge in Florida just dropped a scathing order, excoriating acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and directed that a copy be sent to the New York State Bar Association, where an ethics complaint against Blanche is already pending.
That happened on July 13, just two days ahead of Blanche's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. So now Blanche can expect plenty of questions from senators about how he bungled a "settlement" in May for a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed in January against the IRS.
And Blanche has nobody to blame for that mess but himself.
Well, maybe Trump, too.
Blanche was a willing participant in a scam that Trump tried to pull in federal court in Florida, a collusion of federal agencies to create a $1.8 billion slush fund to reward Trump's political allies while granting him and his family lifetime immunity from any IRS audits.
A brief history of Trump's IRS scheme
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams dropped the hammer on all that in a 56-page order on July 13, saying Trump's original lawsuit against the IRS was filed "in bad faith for the improper purpose of dishonestly advancing a political narrative."
That really sums up Trump's first and second terms as president and every campaign he has ever run, doesn't it?
Here is how Trump's scam, engineered by Blanche, came to be and then went off the rails.
An IRS contractor leaked copies of Trump's tax returns to news outlets during his first term as president and was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Trump in January sued the IRS, demanding $10 billion in compensation.
Judge Williams in April expressed concerns about how Trump as an individual could sue an agency he controls, the IRS, which would be represented in court by another agency he controls, the Department of Justice.
Rather than address those concerns, Trump dropped his lawsuit in May, in a court filing that declared that action would "remove completely from the court's consideration the power" to rule on the case.
Trump and Blanche wanted the judge out of the loop because they were cooking up the $1.8 billion slush fund and IRS immunity, and they didn't want her to have any say over those slimy acts of open corruption. Blanche announced the slush fund on May 18, the day the IRS lawsuit was dropped, and the IRS immunity a day later.
"The parties used the existence of federal litigation as a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review," the judge wrote in her July 13 order.
The political blowback in May, especially from Republicans in Congress, was immediate and well deserved. Blanche tried to walk back the slush fund, which a federal judge temporarily blocked. But the IRS immunity for Trump and his family – which was likely the true motivation for this scam – remained in place.
Blanche used DOJ to work all sides of Trump's lawsuit
Judge Williams noted in her ruling that Blanche was working all sides of Trump's lawsuit and said that "demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case."
For that, she said all sides in the lawsuit are now "prohibited from referring to the purported 'settlement agreement,' or using, offering, admitting, or citing any of its provisions in any judicial, administrative, regulatory, arbitration, or any other official proceeding as evidence of a 'settlement' reached in this matter."
The judge is sending copies of her order to the New York State Bar, where two nonpartisan legal groups – Democracy Defenders Fund and Lawyers Defending American Democracy – along with 101 former judges filed an ethics complaint against Blanche on June 22 about the IRS settlement.
Lauren Stiller Rikleen, executive director for Lawyers Defending Democracy, told me the judge's order "will be historic for its outright challenge to the failure of the DOJ and this administration to do their job by acting as public servants rather than acting only in the interest of the administration."
The IRS ruling also calls for Trump's lawyers to be disciplined
The judge also sent a copy of her order to the District of Columbia Bar, citing a complaint filed there on June 16 against Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward by the Campaign for Accountability, another nonprofit group.
Woodward signed off on the IRS settlement documents.
The Campaign for Accountability on July 13 hailed the judge for refusing to allow Trump's "fictional settlement to undermine the legitimacy of the courts" and called on the DC Bar to do the same.
Judge Williams' order also referred another lawyer for Trump, Alejandro Brito, to The Florida Bar for "determination as to whether any disciplinary action is appropriate," and banned another Trump lawyer, Daniel Epstein, from practicing in the Southern District of Florida for one year.
That's a lot of lawyers in a lot of trouble for trying to help Trump run a scam in court. Blanche should expect to be called to answer for that when his confirmation hearing convenes July 15.
Don't expect him to come prepared with decent answers for those questions. Blanche prefers the Trump tactic of attacking judges for following the law. That's just one of the reasons why he's unqualified to be our attorney general.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Judge slams Trump's acting AG in 'bad faith' IRS lawsuit | Opinion
Reporting by Chris Brennan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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This story was originally published July 14, 2026 at 10:59 AM.