Twenty-three state attorneys general filed a scathing brief Monday calling Trump's settled IRS lawsuit a "collusive sham" that fraudulently used the courts to funnel taxpayer money to the president's allies and immunize the Trump family from federal investigations.
The brief, filed in the Southern District of Florida and led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, urges the court to reopen the case and grant "all necessary and appropriate relief" to "rectify the fraud perpetrated upon the Court and deter future misconduct by those who have sworn to faithfully uphold and support the rule of law."
The attorneys general argued that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's own former personal lawyer, rushed the settlement through two days before the parties were due to answer a judge's questions about whether the lawsuit was even a legitimate dispute. Rather than respond, they say, Blanche executed agreements creating a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" and a sweeping immunity addendum that bars the government from ever investigating the Trumps' tax returns, then kept both documents off the court docket until after the case was closed.
"Put simply, the parties’ conduct has revealed that the litigation was nothing more than a corrupt effort to 'defile the court itself' through a collusive sham lawsuit," the brief stated.
The attorneys said the DOJ refused to raise obvious defenses, including that the case was time-barred and that the immunity addendum, signed by Blanche, was granted for no legitimate consideration. They argued the entire scheme amounts to an unconstitutional end-run around Congress's power of the purse.
While Blanche has since killed the $1.776 billion fund under a mountain of pressure, the addendum barring future IRS audits of the Trump family remains in place, though a federal judge has reopened the case to examine whether the entire settlement constitutes fraud on the court. Trump sued the IRS after a contractor pleaded guilty in 2023 to leaking his tax returns to media outlets.
