A US federal appeals court has rejected President Donald Trump’s request to immediately suspend sanctions imposed on his lawyers over a disputed settlement linked to a lawsuit concerning the leak of his tax returns.
A three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Tuesday declined to halt a July decision by US District Judge Kathleen Williams, who ruled that Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was effectively created to facilitate a settlement.
Williams had concluded that the case was used to support an agreement that would eliminate outstanding federal tax liabilities involving Trump, members of his family and his businesses.
Under the proposed settlement, the Justice Department also agreed to establish a $1.776bn fund for people described as victims of political prosecutions.
Following her ruling, Williams referred Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for possible disciplinary action. She also barred attorney Daniel Epstein from practising before the federal district court in South Florida for one year.
The judge further restricted the parties from publicly portraying the settlement as a resolution of the claims in the lawsuit.
Trump and his legal team subsequently asked the appeals court to suspend the sanctions against the two lawyers and remove the restrictions on their public comments regarding the settlement.
However, the appeals panel said the request was largely premature because the lawyers had not yet faced actual disciplinary action. It also noted that Williams was still considering a request seeking to make Trump responsible for legal fees incurred by attorneys who challenged the settlement.
The judges further said Brito and Epstein had not presented substantive evidence capable of countering allegations that Trump and the IRS improperly worked together.
Trump’s lawyers “have not made a strong showing that the district court committed clear error in its collusion and bad faith findings,” the panel concluded.
Judges Adalberto Jordan and Robin Rosenbaum, both appointed by former President Barack Obama, and Trump appointee Kevin Newsom participated in the ruling.
The decision did not identify an individual judge as its author and stressed that it was preliminary. The panel said the ruling would not bind the judges who will ultimately handle the final resolution of the appeal.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team did not directly respond to the appeals court decision but criticised the disclosure of Trump’s tax returns.
“President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Norm Eisen, an attorney representing 35 former federal judges who had asked Williams to reopen the case after Trump dropped the lawsuit, welcomed the appeals court’s decision.
“As we said from the beginning, Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS was a sham, and the slush fund and global release deals that flowed from it were too. The Eleventh Circuit saw this collusive scheme for exactly what it is,” Eisen said in a statement.
