Appeals court declines to pause sanctions against Trump’s lawyers in IRS case

A U.S. appeals court refused on Tuesday, September 29, to immediately block sanctions imposed on President Donald Trump’s lawyers, whom a federal judge accused of abusing the judicial system by arranging a “deal” in Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as Reuters reports.

At the heart of the ruling is the $10 billion lawsuit that Trump, members of his family — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — and the Trump Organization filed against the IRS over the disclosure of the president’s tax information.

Federal judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida called the lawsuit “collusive,” with “no valid basis in law or fact,” a “sham,” and imposed non-monetary sanctions on the lawyers: she referred attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for possible discipline; barred former White House lawyer Daniel Epstein from seeking admission to practice in the Southern District of Florida for a year; allowed 35 former federal judges and former IRS and Treasury officials (amici curiae) to seek reimbursement of legal expenses from Trump; and barred the parties from citing the so-called “settlement agreement” as evidence of a settlement in any official proceeding. According to reports, the agreement would have protected Trump and his family from past tax investigations and would have directed a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

Williams had also refused to stay the sanctions about two weeks earlier, with an 18-page order on September 14. Trump’s lawyers from the DLA Piper firm and the Department of Justice — through interim deputy prosecutor R. Trent McCotter — jointly requested an “immediate stay” from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, calling the sanctions “unprecedented, unconstitutional.” On Tuesday, the appeals court declined to suspend them.