Justice Department asks the Eleventh Circuit to stay sanctions against Trump and his lawyers and to reassign the case away from the district judge
The Justice Department, appearing as counsel for the defendant agencies, filed a response in the Eleventh Circuit backing President Trump's motion to stay a district court order that sanctioned him and his private lawyers, and asking the appeals court to reassign the case in the district court.
What happened
The response was filed on August 12, 2026 in Eleventh Circuit case 26-12692 as "Defendants' Response to Appellants' Time-Sensitive Motion for Stay," signed by Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter as counsel for the defendants — the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury. It asks the court to immediately stay the district court's order pending appeal and to reassign the case in the district court, arguing that surrounding circumstances give the strong appearance that the order's rushed issuance was done for an improper political motivation. The brief tells the court it "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." The order at issue is the 56-page order U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams issued on July 13, 2026 in the Trump v. IRS litigation, which imposed sanctions on the plaintiffs and their counsel, reported one attorney to the Florida bar, barred another from pro hac vice practice for a year, and prohibited the parties from citing the settlement agreement in other proceedings.
Why it matters
A request to reassign a case takes the judge off it, and here the Justice Department made that request while appearing as counsel for the agencies Trump sued — backing the motion of the party suing its own clients, in litigation he brought in his private capacity. This record follows the distance between the Justice Department's institutional client and the President's private interest, because that distance is what keeps a prosecutor's office from being a party's law firm.