Donald Trump gives a speech about taxes and Social Security in The Villages, Florida, May 1, 2026.Jim Watson/AFP/Getty
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A new addendum to the so-called settlement agreement between Trump and Trump—that is, the Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s personal lawyers—will “forever” prohibit the United States from seeking any claim or initiating any IRS enforcement action or audit against Donald Trump, his sons Eric and Don Jr., and the Trump Organization, based on any previous filings.
The order appeared on Tuesday in a supplementary document signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and posted on the DOJ website.
This is madness.
On Friday, Donald Sherman, president of the legal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told me that Trump’s underlying $10 billion lawsuit against his own IRS was “a stunningly corrupt attempt for the president to take taxpayer money and put it in his pocket.”
“Having the IRS agree to no audits of the President, his family and their businesses is unheard of.”
On Monday, the DOJ then rolled out terms for a $1.8 billion restitution fund, essentially controlled by Trump, to compensate the supposed victims of the agency’s “weaponization”—namely, Trump’s allies who ran afoul of the law, including the hooligans who ransacked the Capitol and attacked police officers on his behalf on January 6, 2021.
The DOJ is presenting the fund as a settlement. But Judge Kathleen Williams’ order on Monday dismissing the case of Trump v. IRS emphasized that there was no legal settlement in the case. This is not a settlement. It is theft.
And this latest twist is, as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says in a statement, “another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt administration in history,” and a clear “violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials in IRS audits.”
Blanche’s addendum, unless Congress steps in, will prevent the IRS from pursuing a man who, as I wrote in my earlier story, has been found guilty or liable in several civil and criminal fraud cases, and whose company, the Trump Organization, was found guilty of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Last week, after the New York Times reported that the administration was considering a ban on Trump audits, I reached out to John Koskinen, Obama’s IRS chief, for his thoughts. I quoted him in my story, but now that the administration has pulled the trigger on this, here is Koskinen’s full response:
As far as I can tell from my experience, the possible settlement of the President’s $10 billion suit against the IRS by having the IRS agree to no audits of the President, his family and their businesses is unheard of. I don’t recall the IRS ever promising a taxpayer that there would be no audits.
Audits get settled all the time, but promising no audits simply raises the question of what someone is worried about or trying to hide. This is especially troubling when, as the President acknowledges, the Department of Justice, representing the IRS in the case, works for the President.
Audits of complicated returns can be expensive for the taxpayer, but the IRS goes out of its way to make sure that, when a return is selected for audit by the algorithms the IRS technology uses, there is a reasonable concern that the appropriate taxes have not been paid. The IRS keeps track of “no change” audits in order to adjust those algorithms and do the best they can to insure that only questionable returns are subject to an audit.
Promising not to audit a taxpayer, or a group of taxpayers, would set an unfortunate precedent.
That unfortunate precedent has now been set.
“Trump’s dirty deal has crossed the line into illegality,” notes a statement from the co-presidents of the group Public Citizen, which, along with CREW, had filed an amicus brief in Trump v. IRS urging Judge Williams to stay the lawsuit until Trump left office and to forbid the parties from entering into an agreement.
Federal law, they explain, “bars presidential requests to terminate audits made either ‘directly or indirectly’ and requires IRS officers and officials who receive such requests to report them to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Failure to do so may subject those officers to criminal prosecution.”
Of course, Trump could just pardon them all, as he did the January 6 defendants.
“Democrats are going to fight every element of this self-dealing settlement.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) wrote in a tweet that the Trump immunity agreement represents an “unprecedented level of corruption.”
“What is Trump hiding from the American people?” she added. “Congress must step up and stop this corruption.”
Even some Republicans, before the IRS news broke, sounded unhappy about the Trump-DOJ “settlement.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he was “not a big fan” of the restitution fund. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and even Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also questioned it.
“We are a nation of laws; you can’t just make up things,” recently defeated Sen. Bill Cassidy told reporters on Monday. I just came off the campaign trail. People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting the slush fund together without a legal precedent.”
“Democrats are going to fight every element of this self-dealing settlement,” Wyden vowed. “But regardless of the outcome of those efforts, future administrations and IRS leadership should consider this illegal directive completely invalid.”
Dan Friedman contributed reporting.
