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Yesterday in the Southern District of Florida Donald J. Trump, in his personal capacity, filed a lawsuit for $10 billion in damages related to the leak of his tax returns. The defendants? The Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of the Treasury. I am not familiar enough with the relevant statutes to venture whether this claim is viable. Assuming it is, I am highly skeptical Trump and his co-plaintiffs could demonstrate $10 billion in actual damages (which is what the cited statutes allow them to recover plus costs and attorney fees). I also read both statutes as having a two year statute of limitations and the events giving rise to the liability occurred in 2019/2020 so it is not clear to me that the suit is viable on that basis.
The above may all be academic. My understanding of the relevant federal procedure is that judges are not going to raise issues like the statute of limitations or factual issues with alleged damages on their own initiative. Our system assumes the parties are adversarial, so the defendants would file a motion to dismiss citing the statute of limitations or contest any damage calculations they thought were incorrect. Of course, in this case, the plaintiff is also the boss of the defendant. With plenary power to fire them. Can Trump, as president, just order Scott Bessent (currently both the Secretary of the Treasury and Commissioner of the IRS) to settle the suit for the full amount? And fire him if he refuses? What is the precedent on presidents suing the government while they're president? Normally when one side of a lawsuit is not interested in pressing its case other entities that have a shared interest can intervene to do so, but it's not clear to me who is in that position here.
I guess (random layman thoughts) maybe there's an argument that federal courts don't have jurisdiction to hear this because the parties aren't actually in controversy as required by Article 3, since it's Trump suing himself? Just spitballing. Is there any legal mechanism, short of impeachment, to prevent Trump from gifting himself the full contents of the United States Treasury via lawsuit settlements?
((It's not clear that the sticker-price is something being seriously argued, rather than an opening-bid. It's a... very aggressive argument, and being independent from actual damages that would normally make it more desirable probably makes it less interesting as a final action for Trump, who definitely puts "I was right" as a high value.))
Courts do independently bring in external lawyers to support a legal brief, though the actual legal (and financial!) authorization to do so is very unclear. I'd expect that at a minimum.
Courts have an independent duty to consider standing, and defendants (and plaintiffs) can't wave that, even if they wanted. Only would clearly help with overtly pretextual lawsuits, though, which isn't really the case, here. There's an adversity doctrine argument against collusive lawsuits, but it's an incredible reach to apply it here.
(Defendants can waive statute of limitations concerns in some cases)
Settlements have to be evaluated by the courts to be 'real' settlements. That's historically been held more in theory than in practice, given the cy pres abuse back in the Obama era, but it could and likely would be brought here. On the gripping hand, you don't need a 'real' settlement to have a court case go away, or a lot of money to change hands.
In theory, anyone with an IRS balance is being harmed by a massive giveaway, but courts have universally rejected taxpayer standing, and with good reason. The House, with the power of the purse, does have legislative standing in a lot of cases and might have it in face of a large giveaway -- but individual legislators might not, and there's a lot of messiness about how they could argue about the facts. And, ultimately, there's a 'you and who's army' problem.
On the gripping hand, the courts might well just move so slowly that someone else is the President by the time it gets anywhere.
Sometimes I feel like I might be the only person on the planet who slogged through The Art of the Deal. This has been Trump's negotiating MO for decades at this point - the only real difference is that this time it's in a court house and not a conference room.
The door-in-the-face negotiation tactic is maybe the oldest in the book, and Trump seems to think it’s the most brilliant thing ever. Perhaps he’s right, judging by how many people still don’t seem to notice when he’s using it.
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