WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday moved to withdraw his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns after reports that his administration was poised to create a fund to compensate some of his allies.
The disclosure was made in a filing in federal court in Florida, where the lawsuit was filed last year.
ABC News first reported last week that Trump was prepared to drop his lawsuit as part of a deal that would create a $1.7 billion fund to pay allies of the president who believe they were wrongly investigated and prosecuted.
The court filing did not mention terms of any potential deal.
News that the Trump administration was contemplating a fund to pay Trump allies drew an immediate backlash from Democrats, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, who called the idea “unconstitutional.”
“This, of course, is a political grievance fund that Donald Trump can use to pay off his friends,” Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“If these people have a valid cause of action, they should bring it to the court like every other American does, and use the system of due process, and proving things by clear and convincing evidence, or a preponderance of evidence, go and prove it. But the idea that Donald Trump can just pass it out like a pardon is absurd,” he added.
It was not immediately clear who precisely will stand to benefit from the fund but its creation reflects Trump’s long-running claims that the Biden administration Justice Department was weaponized against him.
He has cited as proof the since-dismissed criminal charges he faced between his first and second terms of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost and of retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Several aides of his were also prosecuted, as were hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization and has said his decisions followed facts, the evidence and the law. His Justice Department also investigated Biden for his handling of classified information and brought separate tax and gun prosecutions against Biden’s son Hunter.
Nonetheless, Trump’s current Justice Department has actively pursued the president’s retribution campaign and grievances, bringing criminal charges against some of his perceived adversaries and initiating a wide-ranging investigation that aims to establish a years-long conspiracy between law enforcement and intelligence officials to destroy Trump’s political prospects and keep him power.
No charges have been brought in that investigation and it is not clear that any ever will be.
Trump filed a lawsuit earlier this year in a Florida federal court, alleging that a previous leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”
The president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are also named plaintiffs in the suit.
Hussein, Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.
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