President Donald Trump speaks about Dulles International Airport modernization, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
In an apparent effort to show that Donald Trump's lawsuit against the IRS and sudden "settlement" was not at all "collusive," a high-ranking DOJ lawyer is now arguing against the sanctions imposed on the president's private attorneys.
Just days ago, Brooklyn, New York-based Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis dressed down Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter for "irregularities" in a decision to drop a bribery case against an Indian billionaire who shares an attorney with Trump.
The judge emphasized that McCotter "appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment," in a "highly unusual" move.
Garaufis said the lawyer's conduct in the course of the dismissal "evince[d] a lack of respect for the Judiciary as a co-equal branch."
Nevertheless, McCotter was behind a filing before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that argued that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida has wrongly punished Trump's private attorneys and gagged the sitting president from referring to the "settlement" she adjudged "non-adversarial" and "collusive" in mid-July.
The filing suggested that the only abnormal aspect of what took place was Williams' decision to let "three different sets of amici" — including 35 former federal judges, and ex-IRS and Treasury officials — make arguments opposing the case that the DOJ never did, in the end inviting them to seek legal fees.
"The District Court criticized the Department of Justice for settling rather than raising arguments that other courts had rejected," McCotter said. "One of the two fundamental premises of the District Court's Order was that Plaintiffs filed this suit with an 'improper purpose' because the Complaint was a 'vehicle to achieve a predetermined outcome.' But that makes zero sense, for the simple reason that a party need not file a lawsuit in order to obtain a full settlement with the federal government."
"Given this, if there had been some plan to collude (there wasn't), filing a complaint would be the last thing that Plaintiffs would do, because it would ensure public attention," he said. "Nor can the District Court claim that it was somehow tricked into blessing or lending credibility to the settlement, for the simple reason that the Parties never asked the District Court to do anything regarding the merits or settlement. In fact, the District Court lost jurisdiction over this case months ago."
McCotter asserted that this couldn't have been a "collusive" case because it all happened out in the open.
"After all, collusive settlements hide exceedingly poorly in plain sight," the filing said, asking the 11th Circuit to reassign the case away from Williams to another judge, in a jurisdiction filled with Trump appointees.
"This Court need not conclude that the District Court's actions were improperly motivated, but rather only that reasonable members of the public would view them that way," McCotter said.
Trump's lawyers have separately asked the 11th Circuit to immediately stay Williams' sanctions order, which referred Trump attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar and granted monetary "reimbursement" to the amici. They claimed the judge issued her order without "proof of collusion and bad faith" — all while slapping a "sweeping, unconstitutional, and unlawful gag order" on the president himself.
The judge, a Barack Obama appointee, earlier declined to stay her sanctions, finding no "good cause" for that result.