By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-30 13:32:09 | Updated at 2026-09-30 16:42:55
3 hours ago
The Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. Courthouse, home of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 20, 2007. Eoghanacht via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
A federal appeals court has turned down a request from President Donald Trump to block sanctions against his lawyers.
A panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit judges said on Sept. 29 that Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice, who requested the block, have not shown they are likely to succeed in the case.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in July ruled that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns was collusive because Trump controls the IRS and the Department of Justice, meaning the parties were not oppositional as civil lawsuits require.
“The appellants did not submit or offer any evidence to explain their litigation conduct or demonstrate that the lawsuit and the settlement were not collusive,” the appeals court judges, Circuit Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom, and Robin Rosenbaum, wrote in a per curiam opinion on Tuesday.
“Given the record before us, the appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court committed clear error in its collusion and bad faith findings.”
A lawyer representing Trump did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
The suit against the IRS, filed by Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization in January, alleged a former IRS employee illegally accessed and disclosed their tax returns, and sought damages. After prosecutors charged an IRS contractor with disclosing the returns, he pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information.
The plaintiffs later asked for voluntary dismissal. They and the government had reached an agreement that included creating a $1.78 billion fund that they said would compensate people who were victims of “weaponization and lawfare.”
The fund was ultimately shelved after being challenged in court and as part of Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation process.
Williams, in her order, concluded the suit was not about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or factual dispute.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” she wrote in July.
She imposed sanctions against two of Trump’s lawyers.
In a filing to the 11th Circuit, Trump said through attorneys that the ruling was improper.
“The court wrongly decided that the President cannot sue the Federal Government in his personal capacity, and that this prohibition somehow extended to his sons, who are private citizens, and his business, which he is no longer running,” the motion for a stay stated. “The court did not cite any law supporting this extraordinary, unjust ruling. Even worse, the court improperly treated the filing of the Complaint as proof of collusion and bad faith, neither of which existed.”
Granting such a motion requires a court to find the requesters are likely to succeed in their case and will be irreparably injured without a stay.
Trump and his attorneys have not met any of the standards, the appeals court judges said. That’s partly because Williams’s order is not final, so an appeal is premature, the panel said.
