In January, Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion. This week that lawsuit was quietly settled. And buried in the settlement, in a hyperlink that wasn’t even mentioned in the press release, was one of the most corrupt acts of self-dealing in modern American political history.
The IRS is now legally barred from auditing Donald Trump, his family, or any of his businesses. Ever again.
The president of the United States used a lawsuit against his own government to exempt himself from the tax enforcement system that every other American is subject to.
How He Did It
Trump, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and the Trump Organization, filed a $10 billion lawsuit in January against the IRS and the Treasury Department. The claim was that the IRS failed to protect his confidential tax records from being leaked by a former contractor in 2019 and 2020.
Those leaked records revealed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. And no federal income taxes at all for most of the previous 15 years.
He called the reporting “totally fake news.” Then spent six years suing the government over it.
The Settlement Nobody Was Supposed to Notice
The Justice Department announced Monday that Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit. In exchange, the DOJ established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people allegedly wrongly targeted under the Biden administration, widely expected to pay out to Trump’s allies, including January 6 Capitol rioters.
Controversial enough on its own. Then came the part buried in a hyperlink nobody was supposed to find.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s own appointee, quietly signed a one-page addendum declaring that the federal government would not seek any audit or payment from Trump, his family, or their companies on any pending tax claims. The IRS cannot bring claims against them for past tax issues.
Blanche made no mention of this addendum during his testimony before a Senate committee earlier the same day.
It was hidden. In a hyperlink. In a press release.
The Part That Should Alarm Everyone
The lawsuit Trump filed was about privacy. Someone leaked his tax documents. That’s the claim.
The settlement that emerged doesn’t just resolve the privacy claim. It goes far beyond that. It permanently bars the IRS from pursuing entirely separate, unrelated tax compliance questions. Questions about whether Trump and his businesses were actually paying the taxes they owed.
There is a law that specifically makes it illegal for a president to interfere with his own IRS audit. The DOJ chose not to address whether this settlement violates it.
The president’s own attorney general signed off on a deal that benefits the president personally. With no public announcement. No Congressional approval. No judicial oversight.
That is corruption. By definition.
The Irony That Makes It Worse
“Every year they audit me,” Trump said during a 2016 presidential debate. “Nobody gets audited. I have friends that are very wealthy people. They never get audited. I get audited every year.”
He complained for a decade about being audited.
Now he has legally ensured it never happens again.
What This Means For You
The IRS audits approximately 300,000 Americans every year. Lower and middle income households face higher audit rates than the wealthiest Americans because the IRS doesn’t have resources to pursue complex high-net-worth cases.
The system is already tilted against ordinary people. The president just tilted it further, by exempting himself from it entirely.
The revenue the IRS collects funds public services, infrastructure, healthcare, and defence. When powerful people don’t pay what they owe, ordinary taxpayers either make up the difference or those services get cut.
Trump just made himself the most powerful example of a system where the rules apply to everyone except the people who make them.
What Critics Are Saying
Senator Ron Wyden called it “an act of corruption,” pointing out that while Trump used privacy laws to shield himself from the IRS, his Treasury Department was simultaneously sharing tens of thousands of ordinary Americans’ tax records with immigration enforcement.
Representative John Larson introduced the Prevent Presidential Profiteering Act, which would impose a 100% levy on any settlement the president, their family, or their businesses receive from the government. “Trump has a plan to steal our tax dollars by suing himself and leaving us on the hook,” he said.
Neither bill is expected to pass a Republican-controlled Congress.
The Bottom Line
Trump sued his own government for $10 billion. His own attorney general settled it. The settlement contained a hidden clause making the president immune from tax enforcement. That clause was buried in a hyperlink. Never mentioned publicly.
The IRS audits you. It audits your employer. It audits your business. It no longer audits the president of the United States, his sons, or his company.
That’s not a legal technicality. That’s corruption with a paper trail.
