The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge in Florida has ruled that the IRS lawsuit filed by Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization was brought for an improper purpose: to lend court-backed legitimacy to a settlement that was already in motion. In an order dated July 13, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said the case could not be treated as proof that the parties went through a normal adversarial process before reaching an agreement.

Williams did not void the settlement itself. But she said the deal cannot be cited in judicial, administrative, regulatory or other proceedings as evidence that the litigation produced a legitimate legal outcome. The ruling is a sharp distinction. It leaves the agreement in place while stripping away its value as a seal of approval from the court. The settlement includes the Justice Department’s creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund, which the department said would be used to hear claims from people alleging they were targeted by government power for political reasons.

The judge also took aim at the lawyers involved. She referred Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for possible discipline and limited Daniel Epstein’s ability to seek admission or file cases in the Southern District of Florida for one year unless the court orders otherwise. Those steps signal that Williams saw the conduct as more than aggressive lawyering. In her view, the filing and the deal it supported crossed into territory that merited outside review.

The order is important not because it erased the settlement, but because it refused to bless the way it was put together. Williams drew a line between a real case and a paper case, saying the court would not be used to dress up a prearranged result as if it had been tested through ordinary litigation. For Trump and his allies, that leaves the arrangement intact but the judicial record far less useful than they may have wanted.