A federal judge on Friday questioned whether Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the IRS disclosure of his tax information can move forward, saying the parties may not be sufficiently adverse for the case to proceed. Judge Kathleen Williams ordered both Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department to file briefs explaining why the case should continue and set a hearing for next month.
The dispute dates to 2019, when Trump sued the IRS over the public disclosure of his tax information. In January, Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization filed a new lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department, pushing the fight into a courtroom where the government they are suing is still led by a president who can direct it. Williams said that arrangement raises questions about whether the parties are truly antagonistic, echoing her observation that the case is meant to be a dispute between parties who face each other in an adversary proceeding.
That concern lands against a more complicated backdrop. A government contractor with the IRS pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing tax information from Trump and other wealthy Americans and leaking it to media outlets in 2019 and 2020. Last month, a group of former government officials filed an amicus brief warning that it is extraordinary for a president to sue his own government for billions, saying the setup creates the prospect of collusive litigation tactics. The judge’s order did not resolve that concern, but it put the burden on both sides to explain why the court should not treat it as a fatal flaw.
The timing matters because Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department were already discussing a possible resolution last week, and his lawyers sought a 90-day extension to keep talking and avoid protracted litigation. Their filing said both sides agreed to the extension, even as the Justice Department had not yet responded to the lawsuit and faced an impending deadline this month. That leaves Williams with a live procedural question and a case that now hinges less on the tax disclosures themselves than on whether the government can legally be sued by the president who oversees it.
What comes next is now set: briefs, then a hearing next month. If Williams decides the parties are not truly adverse, the lawsuit could run into a threshold problem before the court ever reaches the merits of Trump’s claim.
