U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, May 20, 2026. President Trump is in Connecticut to deliver the commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
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A $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service that President Donald Trump recently dismissed should be reopened so the judge overseeing it can investigate “whether there was any wrongdoing,” 35 former federal judges argued Wednesday.
On May 18, Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization abruptly dropped a lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department based on leaks of tax information by former IRS officials in 2019 and 2020.
Federal Judge Kathleen Williams of Miami District Court preemptively ordered the lawsuit to be dismissed in response, noting that the action cancels future deadlines related to her efforts to scrutinize the matter.
She also noted in the judgment that the plaintiffs made no mention of the settlement and that the defendants did not submit any settlement documents.
On the same day, the Department of Justice announced that as part of a settlement agreement in the case, the U.S. Attorney General would establish a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.
The next day, the Department of Justice unveiled an addendum to the proposed settlement that effectively protects the plaintiffs and certain affiliates from IRS enforcement on past tax returns.
“The court was deceived,” the former judges wrote in a court filing Wednesday afternoon.
“The (Department of Justice) announced a ‘settlement’ of this case shortly after the plaintiffs filed for dismissal, even though the plaintiffs did not mention the settlement in their notices,” they wrote.
The settlement “raises serious questions about the parties’ candor with the courts and the operation of the judicial system, and threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice,” they argued.
Retired judges who joined in the filing include J. Michael Ruttig, who testified before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
The former judges are seeking to “raise an allegation of fraud” through Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which would allow Williams to reopen the case. As an alternative, they urged Williams to resume the trial alone.
In either case, they want the court to be able to “set aside its decision in this case” and “reopen its investigation into whether there is, in fact, an underlying incident or controversy, or, conversely, whether this ‘case’ that the parties claim to have ‘settled’ is itself a fraud on the court.”
The judges argued that the settlement was “the product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court.” But they argued that Mr. Williams did not have to immediately agree to suspend the dismissal.
Reopening the case “allows the court to begin an investigation into whether the court was deceived, including the existence of the underlying litigation or controversy and the arm’s-length negotiations that allegedly took place to resolve it.”
The White House referred CNBC to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the application. The IRS and Trump Organization did not immediately comment on the filing.
