The Republican leadership of the House Judiciary Committee published a joint letter last Thursday regarding their “concerns” about “potential judicial misconduct” by Judge Kathleen Williams, a federal district judge who had the misfortune of hearing President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year.
Back in 2019 and 2020, a contractor with the IRS leaked some of Trump’s tax returns to The New York Times and ProPublica. In January 2026, Trump sued the agency (which he oversees) in “his personal capacity,” and demanded $10 billion in damages. Then, in May, he tried to “settle” the case (with himself) by agreeing (with himself, again) to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit in exchange for the Department of Justice’s creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which would have empowered Trump’s Attorney General to dole out cash awards to alleged victims of “lawfare” by “Democrat elected officials.”
About a week later, nearly three dozen former federal judges filed a motion in the case as amici, arguing that Trump’s lawsuit and the purported settlement were “a product of collusion” and a “fraud on the court” that must be set aside. Williams agreed, writing in a July 2026 order that the case was an attempt to gain “unprecedented access to the public fisc,” as well as “the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy” for a “‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”
In light of these conclusions, Williams referred the lawyer who signed Trump’s complaint, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for disciplinary action. She blocked the lawyer who signed the settlement on Trump’s behalf, Daniel Epstein, from practicing law in her district for one year. And she directed the court clerk to mail a copy of the order to the bar associations that were already holding disciplinary proceedings against the Department of Justice lawyers who signed the settlement on behalf of the government: Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward.
In their letter last week, Republican Representatives Jim Jordan and Darrell Issa allege that Williams’ conduct was an “abuse of judicial authority” and “motivated by partisan animus.” They characterize her order as “unusual and unsupported,” since she issued it after Trump’s voluntary dismissal and in response to the filing by the former judges—or as the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee put it, “unsolicited information from politically motivated nonparties.” They argue that her treatment of Trump’s lawyers implicates “the integrity and impartiality of the federal judiciary.” And they encourage the Judicial Conference, which sets policies for federal courts, to “examine” whether Williams’s issuance of sanctions warrants disciplinary action.
This is far from the first time that congressional Republicans have sought to teach judges a lesson for doing their jobs. Earlier this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing focused on impeachment as an option for “holding rogue judges accountable.” Before that, the Republican leadership of both the House and Senate Judiciary committees published a joint letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, as the presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, suggesting that dozens of federal judges violated their code of conduct by anonymously sharing their concerns about how the Supreme Court and the Trump administration are undermining the rule of law. Before that, both committees held multiple hearings exploring how the Republican-led Congress could deal with the “problem” of district court judges who “infringed on the rightful power of the President.”
The American legal system tasks federal judges with applying the law to the powerful, and tasks Congress with providing meaningful oversight when courts abuse their power. By sanctioning the lawyers who tried to carry out Trump’s $1.776 billion heist, Williams was trying to do her job. By repeatedly conflating any obstacle to Trump’s agenda with judicial misconduct, Republicans in Congress are refusing to do theirs.
