Trump wants immunity for him and his family against IRS audits of his financial dealings which generally reek of corruption, backroom deals, cheating and fraud. In New York, he was convicted of fraud and cheating on his financial papers to secure loans.
I wish ALL LAW-ABIDING TAX-PAYING AMERICANS can benefit from such favorable treatment. But Trump and his dynasty of morons are part of the swampy elite he promised to drain if elected. Instead, his corruption has blossomed to such a point that his corruption is now global, leveraging his fake peacemaking in other countries to secure deals for his own private empire.
If Trump wants to save his hide and that of his MAGA morons in November, he should disband the IRS, impose a flat tax on everyone, and liberate the American people from the Mafias of lawyers and accountants and other financial middleman leeches between the government and the people. The same thing should be done with the insurance industry.
Alas, such steps will eliminate private sector corruption upon which the GOP thrives. Hence, it is unlikely that Donald Dumb will seek to eliminate the hazy crowd of corrupt attorneys and financial cheating wizards who helped him build his ill-gotten wealth.
==================================================
Republican senators start to question Trump's audit immunity deal
Burgess Everett
Mon, June 22, 2026
Republican senators start to question Trump's audit immunity deal
Senate Republicans are raising concerns about President Trump’s audit immunity agreement with the IRS, with some outright opposing the protection.
Senate Republicans helped thwart half of President Donald Trump's settlement with the IRS — his $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund. Now they're starting to raise concerns about the other half of that deal: Trump's audit immunity.
Five GOP senators told Semafor that they have questions about last month's agreement by the Justice Department to shield Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits or prosecution. Some of them said they outright oppose the audit protection.
The issue could affect the confirmation of Trump's attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Blanche promised to get him a briefing on the deal during a recent private meeting ahead of his hearing next month in the Judiciary Committee, where Cornyn sits and Republicans' one-seat majority makes every vote pivotal.
Blanche underscored to Cornyn that the "purely retrospective" settlement didn't immunize Trump from "future audits on future taxes," the senator told Semafor. But Cornyn is declining to back Blanche until he learns more: "I'm not prepared to vote against him. I'm not prepared to vote for him until I get clarity on that."
The audit agreement was announced in tandem with a $1.8 billion fund designed to compensate people who alleged unjust prosecution by the federal government, including those convicted of participating in the Capitol riot. The Trump administration has since backed away from that fund — but not from Trump's audit immunity.
Under the immunity deal, Trump and his network are excused from audits or any other federal probes of past tax filings. It's a settlement that former IRS and DOJ officials warned Monday far exceeds the scope of the underlying lawsuit, which Trump filed after an ex-IRS contractor leaked his return.
Cornyn isn't the only lawmaker seeking more details on the agreement, including whether it would preclude future audits of past filings or touch only certain past filings.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Semafor he expects senators to offer amendments repealing it, adding that he "absolutely" disagrees with it: "No American should be above the law, not even the president — and maybe even particularly the president."
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she thought the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the IRS, "should take a look" at it.
"Any kind of immunity deal deserves scrutiny," Collins said. "There's, oddly enough, been less discussion generally, in the press and elsewhere, about the tax issue [than the anti-weaponization fund], but I'm unclear whether it's … retrospective or whether it's going forward; whether it applies to a specific case or whether it's all-encompassing."
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, declined to comment on the IRS settlement given "it's related to issues in front of the Finance Committee." But another GOP panel member, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, said he also had questions about its contours, telling Semafor that "we're still trying to get the rest of the details."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told Semafor that "I don't like it and I've asked for more information on it."
Murkowski added: "I'm trying to look at it through the lens of citizens of Alaska out there who are like, 'Wow, that's a hell of a sweet deal to the president, his family, and his business.'"
The agreement may have saved the president more than $100 million in liability under now-closed inquiries. The Justice Department said it's working to assuage senators' concerns.
"The Department of Justice will respond to any questions or clarifications a senator may have or seek. We are currently working to set up the briefing mentioned," said a spokesperson for the Justice Department when asked about the meeting with Cornyn.
Know More
The Trump family sued the IRS in January over the leak of tax returns during the president's first term, prompting questions about whether Trump could legally challenge an entity he controls. DOJ, which represents the IRS, never contested the case, even though it was filed outside the statute of limitations and blamed the IRS for a contractor's actions.
Federal law prohibits the president and his aides — but not the attorney general — from directing the IRS to abandon audits. Though DOJ and IRS officials signed the portion of the settlement that created the $1.8 billion fund, Blanche was the only one who signed the audit-related provisions.
"Anytime the IRS settles with an individual taxpayer or another company, as part of the settlement, it's standard, it's typical to get rid of past ongoing audits," Blanche told a House committee earlier this month. "It's nothing that gives any sort of immunity in the future to the president or his family or his organizations."
The White House defended Blanche when asked for comment about senators' concerns regarding the deal. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Blanche has "done an excellent job" and added that "President Trump has a great relationship with Todd and is very pleased with the job he's done so far."
A federal judge has since reopened the IRS case, citing concerns that the president may have misled the court about the settlement process. Thirty-five former federal judges had warned her it raised "profound questions about the parties' candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system."
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Semafor he doesn't expect Cornyn to be an impediment to Blanche's confirmation but had no qualms with the Texan scrutinizing the immunity deal.
"In his role of oversight of the executive branch of the government," Grassley said, "any member of Congress would be entitled to that information."
==================================================
Republican senators start to question Trump's audit immunity deal
Burgess Everett
Mon, June 22, 2026
Republican senators start to question Trump's audit immunity deal
Senate Republicans are raising concerns about President Trump’s audit immunity agreement with the IRS, with some outright opposing the protection.
Senate Republicans helped thwart half of President Donald Trump's settlement with the IRS — his $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund. Now they're starting to raise concerns about the other half of that deal: Trump's audit immunity.
Five GOP senators told Semafor that they have questions about last month's agreement by the Justice Department to shield Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits or prosecution. Some of them said they outright oppose the audit protection.
The issue could affect the confirmation of Trump's attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Blanche promised to get him a briefing on the deal during a recent private meeting ahead of his hearing next month in the Judiciary Committee, where Cornyn sits and Republicans' one-seat majority makes every vote pivotal.
Blanche underscored to Cornyn that the "purely retrospective" settlement didn't immunize Trump from "future audits on future taxes," the senator told Semafor. But Cornyn is declining to back Blanche until he learns more: "I'm not prepared to vote against him. I'm not prepared to vote for him until I get clarity on that."
The audit agreement was announced in tandem with a $1.8 billion fund designed to compensate people who alleged unjust prosecution by the federal government, including those convicted of participating in the Capitol riot. The Trump administration has since backed away from that fund — but not from Trump's audit immunity.
Under the immunity deal, Trump and his network are excused from audits or any other federal probes of past tax filings. It's a settlement that former IRS and DOJ officials warned Monday far exceeds the scope of the underlying lawsuit, which Trump filed after an ex-IRS contractor leaked his return.
Cornyn isn't the only lawmaker seeking more details on the agreement, including whether it would preclude future audits of past filings or touch only certain past filings.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Semafor he expects senators to offer amendments repealing it, adding that he "absolutely" disagrees with it: "No American should be above the law, not even the president — and maybe even particularly the president."
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she thought the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the IRS, "should take a look" at it.
"Any kind of immunity deal deserves scrutiny," Collins said. "There's, oddly enough, been less discussion generally, in the press and elsewhere, about the tax issue [than the anti-weaponization fund], but I'm unclear whether it's … retrospective or whether it's going forward; whether it applies to a specific case or whether it's all-encompassing."
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, declined to comment on the IRS settlement given "it's related to issues in front of the Finance Committee." But another GOP panel member, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, said he also had questions about its contours, telling Semafor that "we're still trying to get the rest of the details."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told Semafor that "I don't like it and I've asked for more information on it."
Murkowski added: "I'm trying to look at it through the lens of citizens of Alaska out there who are like, 'Wow, that's a hell of a sweet deal to the president, his family, and his business.'"
The agreement may have saved the president more than $100 million in liability under now-closed inquiries. The Justice Department said it's working to assuage senators' concerns.
"The Department of Justice will respond to any questions or clarifications a senator may have or seek. We are currently working to set up the briefing mentioned," said a spokesperson for the Justice Department when asked about the meeting with Cornyn.
Know More
The Trump family sued the IRS in January over the leak of tax returns during the president's first term, prompting questions about whether Trump could legally challenge an entity he controls. DOJ, which represents the IRS, never contested the case, even though it was filed outside the statute of limitations and blamed the IRS for a contractor's actions.
Federal law prohibits the president and his aides — but not the attorney general — from directing the IRS to abandon audits. Though DOJ and IRS officials signed the portion of the settlement that created the $1.8 billion fund, Blanche was the only one who signed the audit-related provisions.
"Anytime the IRS settles with an individual taxpayer or another company, as part of the settlement, it's standard, it's typical to get rid of past ongoing audits," Blanche told a House committee earlier this month. "It's nothing that gives any sort of immunity in the future to the president or his family or his organizations."
The White House defended Blanche when asked for comment about senators' concerns regarding the deal. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Blanche has "done an excellent job" and added that "President Trump has a great relationship with Todd and is very pleased with the job he's done so far."
A federal judge has since reopened the IRS case, citing concerns that the president may have misled the court about the settlement process. Thirty-five former federal judges had warned her it raised "profound questions about the parties' candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system."
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Semafor he doesn't expect Cornyn to be an impediment to Blanche's confirmation but had no qualms with the Texan scrutinizing the immunity deal.
"In his role of oversight of the executive branch of the government," Grassley said, "any member of Congress would be entitled to that information."
==================================================
35 Retired Federal Judges Slam Trump's 'Laughable' Defense of His 'Obviously Collusive' IRS Settlement
Jacob Sullum
Updated Mon, June 22, 2026
35 Retired Federal Judges Slam Trump's 'Laughable' Defense of His 'Obviously Collusive' IRS Settlement
President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS, which resulted in a controversial settlement, has been criticized by 35 former federal judges for being collusive and potentially fraudulent.
As President Donald Trump's lawyers tell it, there is "no evidence" that the May 18 "settlement" of his lawsuit against the IRS, which included huge favors for him, his family, and his supporters, was a product of collusion. That position is hard to take seriously, since both sides in the lawsuit were represented by attorneys who worked for Trump, and the president himself has described the cozy arrangement as "a settlement with myself."
In a June 12 brief ordered by Kathleen Williams, the federal judge in Florida who oversaw Trump v. IRS, the president's lawyers improbably maintained that the "settlement" was business as usual at the Department of Justice (DOJ). That brief "only underscores the need to investigate whether the parties have perpetrated a fraud on this Court and corrupted the integrity of the judicial process," 35 former federal judges argue in a response filed on Friday.
Trump sued the IRS on January 29, claiming that an IRS contractor's illegal disclosure of his tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering a plainly preposterous estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of arguing that the contractor qualified as an "officer or employee of the United States"—a point that the DOJ has disputed in other cases involving similar claims.
Despite those manifest legal weaknesses, the DOJ never contested Trump's claims, in sharp contrast with the way it has handled lawsuits against the IRS by plaintiffs who were not the president. That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the case, which pitted Trump against an agency he oversees, represented by DOJ lawyers who serve at his pleasure. Further compromising the DOJ's ability to represent the IRS, an executive order that Trump issued in February 2025 bars the government's lawyers from taking legal positions that contradict the president's.
The situation was so bizarre that Williams questioned whether the case involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed. But two days before the deadline for briefing on that crucial issue, Trump dropped his lawsuit, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a "settlement agreement" that promised $1.8 billion in taxpayer money for an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" designed to benefit Trump's friends and followers. The next day, Blanche revealed an addendum that purports to shield Trump and his family from liability for tax violations and any other federal offenses they might have committed prior to May 19.
Neither of those provisions was logically related to Trump's complaint that the IRS had failed to properly supervise contractors entrusted with confidential tax information, and the benefits they offered were starkly different from the terms of prior settlements involving unauthorized disclosure of tax returns. The Anti-Weaponization Fund provoked an intense, bipartisan backlash, prompting Blanche to ditch the plan two weeks after announcing it. But Blanche said the sweeping immunity deal, which could save Trump more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties, remained in place.
The retired judges, who include former 4th Circuit Judge Michael Luttig and several other Republican appointees, note that the June 12 brief from Trump's lawyers glides over "clear and convincing" evidence of collusion, which they say is "more than enough to warrant further investigation." That evidence, they say, suggests "the parties used this suit and subsequent settlement to give cover for a give-away to the lead Plaintiff, who also controls the Defendants."
As Luttig et al. see it, Trump's case against the IRS features "an obviously collusive suit; an unprecedented, clearly unwarranted settlement premised on the supposed legitimacy of that suit; active steps to prevent the Court from scrutinizing the legitimacy of their invocation of the judicial process; and now, the Justice Department unilaterally walking away from the huge settlement slush fund, even as it keeps the Plaintiffs' broad personal release." The abandonment of the Anti-Weaponization Fund, they say, is itself striking evidence of collusion.
"That one 'side' of the purported dispute could unilaterally scrap a material term without even so much as a revised written agreement makes it crystal clear that these parties were never adverse," the retired judges argue. "Instead, this suit was collusive from the start: the same person controlled it on both sides of the 'v': President Trump. DOJ's failure to raise dispositive winning defenses while 'settling' the case for an astronomical sum of taxpayer dollars and extraordinarily broad releases to plaintiffs just days before having to answer this Court's questions about collusiveness is further evidence of both collusion and fraud on the court."
Trump's lawyers argued that the DOJ would have been authorized to settle Trump's claims even if he had never filed a lawsuit. Not so, Luttig et al. say: "No authority permits the Government to settle truly non-adverse cases. The statute permitting the Attorney General to settle 'imminent litigation,' for example, does not extend such authority to situations where there is no actual dispute to 'compromise.' The same is true for the statutes authorizing the compromise of tax liabilities and federal claims. For all these statutes, it beggars belief that Congress intended to open the Treasury to 'settlements' orchestrated by the same party controlling both sides of the collusive 'dispute.'"
In an effort to show that Trump's case involved a real legal dispute between adverse parties, his lawyers noted that three of the plaintiffs—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization—were not the president of the United States or even "employees of the federal government." When "private plaintiffs sue the United States for statutory violations," they said, the case is "inherently adversarial."
Please, Luttig et al. say. They note that the individual plaintiffs are "from the same family," that they are "business partners with the same financial interests and counsel," and that they "own or manage the corporate plaintiff." In any event, "Plaintiffs have no answer for the fact that the lead Plaintiff, President Trump, directs and controls the Defendants. That alone renders this lawsuit non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper."
Trump's lawyers suggested he could have won the case on the merits. But as Luttig et al. note, they did not offer "any explanation of how they could overcome the statute of
limitations defense," which "would eviscerate liability."
Despite that fatal flaw, Trump's lawyers claimed the DOJ reached "a fully proper government settlement" after weighing the merits of Trump's claims and assessing the cost of defending against them. They noted that civil defendants routinely decide against litigating claims based on "the entirely rational conclusion that the cost of defense exceeds the cost of settlement."
That suggestion, Luttig et al. say, "is laughable given the facts of this case: a settlement worth nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds plus a capacious and extraordinary general release that purports to forfeit claims for substantial sums in unpaid taxes and other potential damages and fines." Such "monumental relief," they note, "dwarfs any conceivable 'cost of defense.'"
Trump's lawyers argued that the former federal judges did not have standing to file the May 27 motion in which they urged Williams to reopen the case. But that issue is "a red herring," Luttig et al. say, because Williams has "inherent authority" to "investigate fraud."
If Williams concludes that Trump used a phony lawsuit to obtain favors for himself, his relatives, and his supporters, Luttig et al. note, she can impose sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which covers "a range of bad faith conduct," including submissions filed "for an improper purpose," claims with "no reasonable factual basis," and filings "based on a legal theory that has no reasonable chance of success and that cannot be advanced as a reasonable argument to change existing law." They add that "a bad faith or improper purpose might include collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement."
Luttig et al. say Williams also has "inherent power" to reopen the case under Rule 60, which applies to submissions that "defile the court itself" or constitute "a fraud perpetrated by officers of the court so that the judicial machinery cannot perform in the usual manner its impartial task of adjudging cases that are presented for adjudication." They add that Rule 60 "also encompasses an 'unconscionable plan or scheme' perpetrated upon the court."
Because "it addresses schemes that fall in the cracks between existing statutory
mechanisms, the Court's inherent authority confers broad power to remedy fraudulent conduct and sanction litigants and attorneys," Luttig et al. say. "A court's power in such cases is expansive: 'whatever form the relief has taken in particular cases, the net result in every case has been the same: where the situation has required [it] the court has, in some manner, devitalized the judgment.'"
When Williams ordered Trump's lawyers to address Luttig et al.'s charges of collusion and fraud, she did not ask the DOJ for its take on the "settlement agreement." But we can be confident that its response would be similar, since its lawyers also work for Trump—a basic reality that underlies the brazen corruption of his "settlement with myself."
The post 35 Retired Federal Judges Slam Trump's 'Laughable' Defense of His 'Obviously Collusive' IRS Settlement appeared first on Reason.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment