President Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, and is seeking $10 billion in damages.
Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization sued the IRS and the U.S. Treasury Department in federal court in Miami on Thursday, following the leak of their tax returns by a former IRS employee in 2019 and 2020.
Thanks, this is not a sealion question: do you have something to further read about this or support this? I’d like to understand how the DOJ is actually bound. The DOJ has been run by Bondi as Trump’s private law firm, regardless of their mandate, and I expect that to continue.
My initial suspicion is that anything short of a Supreme Court ruling (and possibly not even that) will force compliance by the DOJ, but after-the-fact compliance may be meaningless as well. It’d be quite typical for Trump/Bondi to fully “defend” and settle the case with taxpayer money already in Trump’s account before any challenges complete, followed by appeals, etc.
28 cfr 50.15
(10) If conflicts exist between the legal and factual positions of various employees in the same case which make it inappropriate for a single attorney to represent them all, the employees may be separated into as many compatible groups as is necessary to resolve the conflict problem and each group may be provided with separate representation. Circumstances may make it advisable that private representation be provided to all conflicting groups and that direct Justice Department representation be withheld so as not to prejudice particular defendants. In such situations, the procedures of § 50.16 will apply.
The oig not the commissioner would act on behalf of the IRS because the commissioner is a conflicted party.
Thanks for this. I don’t think it applies here.
50.15 says this is when employees are sued in their individual capacity for official duties. Inter-defendant conflicts of the type in 50.15(a)(10) are typically for when multiple defendants have competing interests and that presents a conflict to joint representation. At best, I see provisions regarding whether the DOJ is not obligated to pay money damages for an employee’s wrongdoing ((a)(8)(iii))
The situation here may just be too corrupt. Trump is suing with private counsel a third party government agency that is technically not him, but the issue is that the captured DOJ itself also is now de facto personal counsel to Trump. The IRS and Treasury are defendants that should be represented by the DOJ, except that the DOJ is irreparably conflicted. So it is Trump, by DOJ proxy, deciding whether to give himself money out of the public’s pocket, and the fact that he filed the suit itself suggests his answer is “yes, I deserve it.”
And, despite this, no private litigation counsel could even address this, because the DOJ would still retain authority to settle.
Trump says IRS but it would have to be against the leaker and the IRS can and likely would refuse to indemnify them given it’s not a legal act nor part of any work duty.