Trump sued the IRS for ten billion dollars because a contractor leaked his tax returns. The judge dismissed the case and referred his lawyer to the bar for disciplinary review. Trump appealed. This is where we are.
Ten billion dollars. Not ten million. Not a hundred million. Ten billion. That's the kind of number you pull out when you're not even pretending to do math anymore. That's a number you get when you ask your lawyer what sounds big and he says "I don't know, all of it?" and you say "perfect, write that down."
The IRS contractor who leaked the returns got four years in prison. That already happened. The criminal case is done. But apparently that wasn't enough. Apparently the appropriate remedy for someone seeing your tax returns is also the GDP of Mongolia.
Now here's the fun part. The judge didn't just toss the lawsuit. The judge wrote an order so scathing it came with a referral letter. Your lawyer gets reported to the state bar like a kid who brought a fake permission slip to school. That's not normal. Judges don't do that unless the filing made them personally angry.
So naturally Trump appealed. Because when a judge calls your lawsuit frivolous and suggests your attorney might need a refresher course on legal ethics, the correct move is definitely to ask a different judge to read it again.
Retail traders are currently Googling whether they can sue their brokers for ten billion dollars because someone at Schwab saw their portfolio balance. They're filling out the form in crayon. They're listing "emotional damages" as "incalculable." They're about to learn what the word vexatious means, and they're going to hate it.
Photo by Frolicsome Fairy on Unsplash
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