Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress this week that the Justice Department is abandoning plans for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump. But Blanche also said the department will not reverse a separate, less-publicized agreement that grants Trump immunity from ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits, The Guardian reported.
The fund, which Blanche had announced in May, was designed to pay people who claimed they had been unfairly prosecuted by the government — a group that the report said could have included those convicted of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The plan drew sharp criticism from Senate Republicans and was ultimately dropped.
The immunity agreement, however, remains in effect. Signed by Blanche and posted on the Justice Department’s website on May 19, the one-page document bars the IRS from continuing audits of Trump, his family members and “related companies.” Blanche has said the deal applies to Trump’s previously filed tax returns but not future ones.
Trump sued the U.S. government in January for $10 billion over the unauthorized release of his tax returns by a federal contractor. The settlement of that lawsuit included both the scrapped fund and the audit immunity, The Guardian reported.
The immunity could save Trump more than $100 million, according to experts cited by the outlet. Trump faced at least one IRS investigation dating back to 2010.
Post-Watergate laws prohibit the president, vice president and their aides from directing or interfering with IRS audits. Congress strengthened those laws in the 1990s so that IRS officials could face prison time for carrying out or terminating an investigation of a particular taxpayer at the White House’s request.
A future Democratic-led Justice Department could use those laws to investigate any decision to end ongoing audits of Trump and his family, The Guardian reported. It is also unclear whether Blanche, as acting attorney general, has the authority to order the IRS — a separate agency that reports to the Treasury Department — to stop tax investigations that began years ago.
The immunity agreement leaves other questions unanswered, including who exactly is covered by the phrase “related or affiliated individuals” and their entities. The document applies to Trump’s children and the businesses they operate, including the Trump Organization, which has negotiated billions of dollars in real estate deals. But it is not clear whether it extends to extended family members or to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who runs a Miami-based private equity firm that has raised billions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The New York Times previously reported, based on leaked tax returns, that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and another $750 in 2017, and that in 10 of the previous 15 years he paid no income taxes at all, primarily by reporting large losses from his businesses.
In 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted in a New York criminal court of tax fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records. The company was fined the maximum of $1.6 million. Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty in the case.