WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump sued his own government and got out of any ongoing IRS audits in an arrangement called illegal and unconstitutional by a federal judge, potentially saving the president $100 million he would otherwise have to fork over to the federal government.
The dubious settlement lives because of an agreement Republican senators reached to advance the nomination of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the original author of the deal. Just don't expect those same Senate Republicans to actually defend what they're allowing Trump to do. They told HuffPost the issue was too complicated or claimed ignorance of the details.
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The potential $100 million gift, so far, has drawn outrage from just a single Republican senator.
"Mr. Blanche approved an order to shield the President, his sons, and the family business from IRS audits, protections unavailable to other American taxpayers," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a statement announcing she would not support Blanche's confirmation.
Other Republicans threw up their hands. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he would defer to Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who prodded Blanche to make sure the tax break applied only to Trump, his two older sons and their company.
"All I know is what they ― my understanding is they had some input into that and got to a place where they were satisfied with how that was going to be treated," Thune said.
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Cornyn and Tillis objected to Blanche's out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit Trump filed against his own government this year. The deal gave Trump an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" worth $1.8 billion and an order, signed by Blanche, barring the government from enforcing laws against the president, his family and his businesses related to any tax returns filed prior to May 19, 2026.
Blanche won over Cornyn and Tillis this week by putting in writing that the fund had been rescinded, and issuing another statement clarifying the tax immunity only applied to the Trumps and their business. The statements represented symbolic concessions rather than significant changes to the Justice Department's new Trump-specific handouts.
The Anti-Weaponization Fund has received far more attention than the tax immunity deal, which was discreetly announced a day after the fund in May. Republican senators were furious with Blanche over the fund, and he quickly announced it wouldn't be "moving forward." But he's never wavered on the settlement's core tax provisions, which may have received less scrutiny from lawmakers because tax policy can be complicated.
"That is a very complex, really complex issue, and for us to try to make it to where we can just understand it in just a millisecond — you can't," Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) told HuffPost.
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"I mean, I hadn't kept up with all that," Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said. "I'm trying to fix college sports, man. Come on."
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) similarly said he didn't know enough about IRS settlements to comment on the specifics of the deal. But he did say Trump had been mistreated.
"Think about what this guy has gone through. They tried to put him in prison. They raided his house. They shot at him. They you know made him put up a whole bunch of money. They tried to bankrupt him," Scott said. "So I don't know enough about the deal that was done, but this guy has gone through a lot."
It's reasonable for members of Congress to defer to their colleagues who are more focused on a given policy question, even if it's a highly controversial topic and something they themselves will have to vote on. Justice, Tuberville and Scott don't serve on committees that oversee the Justice Department or taxes. But even Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, pleaded ignorance about the Trump giveaway: "I don't know the substance of the settlement negotiations, so I don't know what to say."
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The tax committee's top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore), called the tax deal an "outrageous, almost one-of-a-kind disaster situation where one person in the United States has an exemption from being audited, and that's the president."
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who voted Tuesday to advance Blanche's nomination to the full Senate, also preferred not to chime in on Trump's tax treat.
"I think questions about that should be directed to the Justice Department," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said.
"Getting a settlement ― there's nothing inappropriate about that. I think your question goes to the scope of the settlement, who's bound by it, and I just don't know the answer to that question," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said.
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One senator paying attention? John Curtis (R-Utah). "Not my favorite," he said of the Trump tax deal. He said he'd put his trust in Cornyn and Tillis, however, and would support Blanche.
It's possible that even if senators used their leverage and rejected Blanche's confirmation they would wind up with a worse deal. When Cornyn and Tillis initially balked at Blanche, Trump threatened to withdraw the nomination, keep Blanche in an "acting" status and then renominate him next year — after Cornyn and Tillis are out of Congress.
Trump sowed the seeds of the deal in January by suing his own government for $10 billion in damages because his private tax information was illegally leaked to reporters in 2019 and 2020. The Justice Department never contested the suit, and then Blanche announced the settlement just before a scheduled hearing on whether the case should be thrown out because Trump is basically both the plaintiff and the defendant.
The settlement also purported to resolve formal administrative complaints Trump had filed with the Justice Department over its raid of his Florida estate and its investigation into his 2016 campaign. Trump planned to use the fund to make payments to the people he pardoned for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The judge overseeing the case has since forbidden the president from calling the Blanche deal a "settlement" in any official proceeding. She slammed the whole enterprise as a scheme "to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a 'settlement' that had no viable basis in law or fact."
Trump's leaked tax returns revealed he could be on the hook for as much as $100 million as the IRS had been examining, in a yearslong ongoing audit, the president's apparently questionable use of business loss write-offs to reduce his taxable income.
Cornyn told HuffPost he believed his colleagues understood Blanche may have quashed an active IRS investigation into the president, and he acknowledged it was possible the president could get a massive financial benefit.
"It could be," Cornyn said. "I don't know. None of us know."
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