A federal judge who declined to pause her sanctions ruling against President Donald Trump and his lawyers made a point of pushing back on what she called an attempt to “mischaracterize” her punishment. Now that her refusal to issue a stay is before an appeals court, Trump’s private attorneys and the Justice Department are making their case together.
In a brief filing at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, Trump’s outside lawyers at DLA Piper LLP said they agreed with a DOJ brief submitted four days earlier, calling for an “immediate stay” of what they described as U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ “unprecedented, unconstitutional sanctions.”
Roughly two weeks ago, Williams turned aside “each argument” for pausing the sanctions as “unpersuasive.” She stood behind her decision to refer the matter to the bar and to let 35 former federal judges, along with ex-IRS and Treasury officials, pursue attorneys’ fees from Trump for the work of opposing the lawsuit as friends of the court.
Williams, an Obama appointee who previously ordered Florida to shut down the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility before being overturned by the 11th Circuit, held firm to her earlier “detailed findings.” She had concluded that Trump’s lawyers filed a “collusive” lawsuit meant to “manipulate the judicial process” and lend legitimacy to a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and settlement shielding the Trump family and the president from tax investigations tied to past conduct.
In Monday’s filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that Williams had effectively created a “categorical rule” barring a sitting president from suing the government he leads, pointing to her statement that he “could have” filed the same suit as a private citizen.
That reasoning, the filing claimed, showed the “purported defect turned not on the claims asserted, but on President Trump’s status while asserting them.”
Williams had already addressed that argument directly in her order, rejecting it outright.
“The Movants mischaracterize the Sanctions Order as establishing a brightline rule ‘that a President who sues the Executive agency is necessarily suing himself,'” the judge wrote. “This is incorrect; the Sanctions Order established no such categorical rule. On the contrary, the Sanctions Order acknowledged that Lead Plaintiff did have a right to sue and could have done so, without issue, during the lawfully specified time and while a private citizen.”
That reference was to the statute of limitations governing the claims.
In her July sanctions order, Williams acknowledged that “President Trump had a legal right to bring a suit for the unlawful disclosure” of his tax returns — he simply hadn’t done so within the required window.
“Notably, had President Trump (and his then-lawyers Alina Habba and Todd Blanche) brought this lawsuit in a timely fashion while he was a private citizen, this litigation understandably might have been resolved in a 109-day time span,” the judge wrote. “But that is not what happened. Instead, President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer, and the former lawyer of persons who are putative beneficiaries of the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ to prominent positions in the DOJ.”
“These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House Counsel to reach a ‘settlement,'” Williams wrote, describing the sequence of events. She added that it was “risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between” Trump as an individual and the IRS under his own administration.
The Justice Department, for its part, has argued that Williams’ order is “wrong” and “illogical,” warning it could open the door to an “onslaught of sanctions motions and orders against every claim, lawyer, party, or settlement that any interloper or district judge personally dislikes—precedent, logic, jurisdiction, the Constitution, and the facts all be damned.”
