President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose,” a judge said Monday in a scathing decision that referred one of his lawyers for discipline and characterized the $10 billion complaint as an exercise in self-dealing.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests and laying the groundwork for a settlement last spring that granted him immunity from tax audits and created a fund to compensate allies of the president who say they were unjustly persecuted.
I think this is the most central point. Our courts are adversarial. If one party controls both sides, Trump in this case, then the two sides are cooperating, in this case, in favor of Trump and against the government and the people. It perverts the very basis of our judiciary.