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Friends,
The Senate is set to vote this afternoon on a motion to proceed to Trump’s budget package. This will allow senators to vote against Trump’s $1.8 billion payout slush fund, via amendments before final passage. Trump and his Justice Department have already dropped the slush fund, but that should be codified into law.
Congress must also vote against the part of the deal that releases Trump and members of his family from any pending or future prosecutions or investigations involving their tax returns. At a hearing yesterday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that this part of the settlement remains intact.
This protection for Trump and his family is unprecedented in its scope and form. It even extends to “affiliates” of the Trumps. It’s potentially worth tens of millions of dollars. One estimate puts it at $100 million.
If it’s interpreted to mean that the Trumps are protected from future I.R.S. audits — and you can bet that Trump and his family will argue that in court, should they ever be audited again — all the self-dealing and the pay-to-play bribes that Trump and his family have collected will vanish.
Previous standard I.R.S. procedure was to audit the president every year, rather than confer on him sweeping protection from scrutiny on tax returns.
Senate Republicans have protested the $1.8 billion fund but have looked the other way at the audit protection. “I haven’t been focused on that to tell the truth,” said Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins. Well, it’s time that she and other Republicans did focus on it.
Only one Senate Republican — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who’s not running for reelection — has been critical of the audit immunity. “How can you not at least have them be subject to the same thing that I’m subjected to, and every one of you?” he asked yesterday.
Blanche has tried to cast the audit protections as a “standard” and “typical” outcome of litigation against the I.R.S. “Like anytime the I.R.S. 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,” he testified yesterday.
Bullsh*t. First, Trump’s lawsuit against his own I.R.S. is hardly “typical.” No president has ever done this before.
Second, his lawsuit had nothing to do with an audit or tax issue. It focused on the leak of his tax returns by a former I.R.S. contractor during his first term.
Third, this “settlement” provision — giving the Trumps protection against I.R.S. scrutiny — directly violates a law barring the I.R.S. from dropping audits at the direction of the president or his aides.
Fourth, Blanche, the acting attorney general, doesn’t even have authority to order the I.R.S. — a separate agency that’s part of the Treasury Department — to stop civil tax audits.
Compounding all this is the fact that Blanche had been Trump’s personal defense attorney from April 2023 to March 2025, representing Trump in the New York hush-money case, the classified documents case, and election interference case. His conflict of interest now is so blatant that he should have recused himself from participating in Trump’s I.R.S. suit to begin with, along with its ersatz “settlement.”
Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro said at yesterday’s House hearing that the I.R.S. order proved that Blanche was continuing to act as Trump’s personal lawyer. “Do you not find there’s any conflict of interest in what you are doing here as the acting attorney general of the United States?” she asked. Blanche said there was none.
The vote is coming up in a few hours. Please call your senators and representatives now, and tell them you want them to reject Trump’s entire “settlement” — including both the $1.8 billion fund and the I.R.S. immunity.
Reminder: The congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121. An operator will answer and connect you directly to the office of any Senator or Representative in Congress.
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