A federal judge accused the Justice Department of “untenable” stonewalling over how it ended President Donald Trump’s IRS suit.
According to a Friday article by Bloomberg, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis said at a hearing that the DOJ failed to properly answer questions about the origins of the deal that gave Trump, his family, and businesses blanket immunity from IRS audits. During the Friday hearing, Davis ordered some preliminary records turned over within a week and set a September 4 hearing to decide whether to compel further disclosures.
“You have failed on both ends of the discovery process,” Davis told DOJ senior counsel Andrew Block, according to Bloomberg. “That cannot continue.”
A former January 6 prosecutor and a federal workers’ union brought the case that Davis was hearing, according to Bloomberg. In addition to targeting Trump’s IRS immunity, their lawsuit goes after Trump’s plans for a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which critics worry would pay January 6 rioters and Trump allies. Attorney General Todd Blanche has notably insisted that the anti-weaponization fund is dead but has refused to put it in writing.
The challengers want the names of everyone who created, or even conceived, the settlement terms that led to the creation of Trump’s immunity deal with the IRS and the anti-weaponization fund, Bloomberg reported. Davis said the DOJ had to produce those names or explain what privilege shielded them, but the DOJ had done neither, according to Bloomberg.
Block argued that prosecutors replied in “good faith” and said the plaintiffs never narrowed which offices to search. A lawyer for the challengers countered that they wanted decision-makers, not all 190,000 Justice and Treasury employees.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who is overseeing the case, will weigh whether to dismiss the case against the DOJ on September 18. Trump is separately appealing a Florida judge’s finding that he brought the original IRS case in “bad faith.”
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