President Donald Trump gestures to reporters as he walks across the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, May 15, 2026, in Washington.Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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President Donald Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for a settlement deal to launch a $1.8 billion fund to pay claims made by his friends for purported unfair prosecution.
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in his department’s Monday press release, announcing “The Anti-Weaponization Fund.” “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”
“The Fund will consist of a Commission of five members appointed by the Attorney General. One Member will be chosen in consultation with congressional leadership,” the Justice Department’s press release states. “The President can remove any member, but a replacement must be chosen the same way as the replaced member was selected.”
According to the Justice Department, “on a quarterly basis, the Fund shall send a report to the Attorney General outlining who has received relief and what form of relief was awarded.” If Blanche’s previous decisions to protect Trump and go after his alleged enemies are anything to go by, there will therefore be little to no oversight beyond Trump loyalists.
The president has long claimed that he and his allies have been targeted by the Biden administration—including, as Mother Jones’ Michael Mechanic pointed out on Saturday, defendants who were charged for involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization filed the $10 billion lawsuit this past January after IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn leaked the president’s tax returns to ProPublica and the New York Times.
In a Monday amicus brief shared with MS NOW, House Democrats said Trump’s lawsuit “undermine[d] the Constitution” and the potential “Truth and Justice Commission” was a “slush fund.”
“Never in the history of the United States has a sitting President sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads—let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” the Democrats wrote, arguing that Trump was “filing a collusive lawsuit only to immediately dismiss it in order to produce a collusive settlement.”
And this is a pattern. Just think about the ABC lawsuit, where the process of the Trump administration’s pressure and subsequent settlement resulted in a form of extortion. As for the IRS settlement, the president now has a $1.8 billion compensation fund to support future attacks against anyone who opposes him.
