President Donald Trump filed a voluntary dismissal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Monday, without prejudice to his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department.
The lawsuit, filed in January, alleged that the IRS and Treasury Department failed to protect Trump’s confidential tax information from Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor sentenced sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 for leaking the tax records of Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans to the media.
Monday’s filing came two days before a deadline set by Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who had asked the parties to explain why the case could proceed amid concerns about whether the plaintiffs and defendants were sufficiently prejudicial, with Trump serving simultaneously as plaintiff and as executive director of the defendant agencies.
Dismissal followed reporting Last week, ABC News reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was finalizing a deal under which Trump would drop the IRS lawsuit and $230 million in claims related to the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid and the Russia investigation in exchange for the creation of a $1.776 billion President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission. According to the reports, the commission would compensate people who claim they were harmed by what the Trump administration calls the Biden-era federal government’s “weaponization,” potentially including the Jan. 6 defendants.
The first four digits of the reported number – 1776 – refer to the year of American independence, the 250th anniversary of which Trump wants to celebrate with lavish pomp this summer.
According to ABC reports, the fund would come from Treasury resources Judgment Fund — a permanent appropriation that does not require new congressional action — and would be administered by five commissioners, four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general and all of whom would be removed by the president without cause. The Commission would not be obliged to disclose its decision-making processes. Trump himself would reportedly be barred from receiving direct payments related to the three dropped claims, but companies affiliated with him would not be categorically barred from pursuing claims.
Immediately after Monday’s firing, nearly 100 House Democrats filed a lawsuit Amicus briefly He accused Trump of “obvious self-dealing” and asked the court to examine whether the firing was a maneuver to facilitate the settlement. “In this case, there is no difference between Donald Trump as President and Donald Trump in his ‘personal capacity’ (as plaintiff). Instead, the President has repeatedly claimed broad executive powers and often sought to use that power to advance his own personal interests. He cannot claim that IRS and Treasury officials – and their attorneys at DOJ – are acting independently of him in this case,” the brief says.
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, echoed these sentiments in a statement:
This is pure fraud and highway robbery. No one can be both plaintiff and defendant in the same case. And no president can concoct a sham $10 billion damages claim against the government so that he can act as plaintiff and defendant and then, as judge, “settle” his sham case against himself. It is simply not a real case or controversy, as the Constitution requires. But Trump’s Justice Department doesn’t deny any of this because it is implicated in the fraud. This case is nothing more than a racket aimed at taking $1.7 billion in taxpayer money from the Treasury and funneling it into a massive dark money fund that Trump can hand over to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists at the Justice Department, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophantic accomplices in his election theft schemes.
Raskin asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction and block any settlement agreement.
Filed under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i)Voluntary dismissal is automatic and removes the court’s jurisdiction over the merits of the case, but the courts retain the supplementary power to consider sanctions against lawyers. The proposed compensation fund does not require court approval; a legal challenge to this would have to be brought as a separate lawsuit.
