President Donald Trump, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization dropped their $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for the Department of Justice creating a $1.776 billion fund to settle claims by people who allege they are victims of so-called lawfare.
A Miami federal court filing by Trump’s lawyers dropping the lawsuit suggested it effectively barred a judge from analyzing whether the president’s civil suit was legally valid and from dismissing it if she finds it is invalid.
The move came days after ABC News reported the DOJ was negotiating the settlement, which was blasted by Democratic members of Congress who called the then-expected deal a “slush fund” for allies of Trump who had been prosecuted under the Biden administration.
In addition to dropping the lawsuit against the IRS, which related to a leak of Trump’s tax returns, the plaintiffs also agreed that, in exchange for the creation of this fund, Trump will withdraw two administrative claims, “including for damages resulting from the unlawful raid of Mar-a-Lago and the Russia-collusion hoax,” the DOJ said in a statement.
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a statement.
″“As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” Blanche said.
The DOJ said the fund will have “the power to issue formal apologies and monetary relief owed to claimants.”
The new “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will get its money from the DOJ’s judgment fund, which is a perpetual appropriation that allows the department to settle and pay cases.
The DOJ said that the new fund will stop processing claims no later than December 15, 2028.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, said, “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-lead law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, and the IRS.”
“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated actor to unlawfully leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to left-wing news outlets such the New York Times and ProPublica, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” the spokesman said. “Similarly, President Trump was also the victim of illegal harassment and invasions of privacy as part of the politically motivated and completely discredited Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and the wrongful, election interfering raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.”
“President Trump is entering into this settlement squarely for the benefit of the American people, and he will continue his fight to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable,” the spokesman said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a post on X on Monday shortly before the settlement was announced by the DOJ, said, “Trump is one step closer to creating a giant slush fund of taxpayer dollars for his MAGA buddies.”
“This is corruption on steroids,” Warren wrote.
Monday’s court filing noted that Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and The Trump Organization were voluntarily dismissing the lawsuit against the IRS “with prejudice.”
“With prejudice” means the plaintiffs can not renew the same claims in another civil complaint.
The notice of dismissal came two days before a deadline set by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams for the DOJ and Trump’s attorneys to answer whether a “case and controversy exists in this matter so as to establish the Court’s jurisdiction.”
Williams’ question suggested that because Trump is suing “entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” there might not be enough actual adversity between the parties to satisfy a constitutional requirement that federal courts only adjudicate cases or controversies.
The filing on Monday said Trump’s dismissal means “no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any “subsequent order purporting to dismiss ‘all claims’ . . . [would be] a nullity.”
Trump sued the IRS in late January over the leak of his tax information by an IRS employee Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn in 2019 and 2020.
The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement, said, “Regardless of whether Trump filed this lawsuit with a personal payday or a slush fund in mind, he deserves no credit for dropping it, and even by his standards the move he’s trying to get away with now is a stunning act of corruption.”
“What Trump wants is a $1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion, and if he follows through, it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history,” Wyden said.
So trump appoints people to run the DOJ who in turn agrees to write a check for $1.776 billion dollars to give out checks to criminals and #triggered #snowflakes
Your tax dollars at work. We will stop wasteful spending they said.
Murica! Freedumb!
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Just clicking Sounds like a reasonable solution. Now things can be settled out of court much more smoothly. If any Dems were targeted by Garland and the IRS under Bidens direction, they can apply for settlements as well.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
I am not surprised that you think not only should the criminals that attacked the capital be pardoned but also rewarded with our tax dollars. Juries convicted them, not democrats. But facts no longer matter for those living in Trumplandia. You have reached the point of disgusting.
That's what this is. A reward system for the CFT crowd. Criminals For Trump. Hate, violence and crime will be rewarded of you are committing it for the King.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Just clicking Sounds like a reasonable solution. Now things can be settled out of court much more smoothly. If any Dems were targeted by Garland and the IRS under Bidens direction, they can apply for settlements as well.
It is controlled by trump and we will not know where any of the money goes. There is no chance a penny goes to a democrat.
Just clicking Sounds like a reasonable solution. Now things can be settled out of court much more smoothly. If any Dems were targeted by Garland and the IRS under Bidens direction, they can apply for settlements as well.
It is controlled by trump and we will not know where any of the money goes. There is no chance a penny goes to a democrat.
...Trump trying to "buy" a Democrat wouldn't surprise me.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
Justice Department agrees to drop any pending tax claims against Trump as part of IRS deal Ryan J. Reilly Updated Tue, May 19, 2026 at 9:30 PM GMT+1
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an agreement Tuesday declaring the federal government will not seek any sort of audit or payment from the president, his family members and companies on pending tax claims as part of Donald Trump’s settlement agreement with the IRS.
In a sweeping one-page addendum to Monday’s settlement agreement establishing a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, Blanche agreed that the U.S. is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims,” including “monetary relief,” that “have been or could have been” asserted by the IRS against Trump, his family or his businesses.
The addendum comes a day after the Justice Department announced that Trump and his co-plaintiffs would drop their $10 billion suit against the IRS and the Treasury Department over leaked tax returns, as well as claims involving the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, and the Russian collusion scandal “in exchange” for creating the fund, which the Justice Department said set up a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
The addendum blocks the U.S. from seeking damages that could have been asserted against the plaintiffs — Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and their company — as well as other family members and their companies in “any matters currently pending or that could be pending (including tax returns filed before the Effective Date) before Defendants or other agencies or departments.”
The “effective date” would be May 18, the date the settlement was signed. The addendum does not specify which other agencies or departments it is referring to.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the agreement is “only with respect to existing audits, not future.”
The settlement and addendum were agreed to before a court-ordered deadline for this week that would have required the administration answer questions about the president’s IRS lawsuit given his control over the Justice Department.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who was presiding over the case, ordered the matter closed Monday after the Trumps moved to dismissed their suit.
Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that Trump has “turned the federal government into his personal protection racket.”
“This settlement is corruption in the plainest sight: forcing IRS to abandon every audit, past and present, into Trump, his family, and their businesses while steering $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars toward his friends, cronies, and Trump-affiliated companies is self-dealing at its most grotesque,” the statement said.
“This settlement is corruption in the plainest sight: forcing IRS to abandon every audit, past and present, into Trump, his family, and their businesses while steering $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars toward his friends, cronies, and Trump-affiliated companies is self-dealing at its most grotesque,” the statement said.
“This settlement is corruption in the plainest sight: forcing IRS to abandon every audit, past and present, into Trump, his family, and their businesses while steering $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars toward his friends, cronies, and Trump-affiliated companies is self-dealing at its most grotesque,” the statement said.
“It’s a dark, dark day for our democracy.”
Hopefully this is a darkest before the dawn situation and this results in the whole political gravy train system toppling, but probably not.
Democrats (and privately Republicans, too) just upset he's doing blatantly what they do discretely, putting their"democracy" at risk.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
"...leaked tax returns, as well as claims involving the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, and the Russian collusion scandal..."
What is an appropriate reconciliation for such blatant lawfare?
There was no "blatant lawfare". If you want to see what that looks like just watch the current administration. At what point will you ever hold them responsible for anything?
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
No disclosure who gets any money or how much they get. Rumor has it to qualify for any of these funds you will need to join the CFTC, Criminals For Trump Club first. Did you assault a police officer on Jan. 6th and get convicted for it? No problem. We already pardoned you for it and now we will gave you a cash reward for it! Are you a friend, business person or former member of the trump administration who has committed crimes? No worries! Now you will be paid for it! Just remember if you do crimes that trump would too or in support of him, all of your sins will be forgiven and we'll even put cash in your pockets!
Signed, Dr. Jesus
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Not an inability to focus, I just like variety over saying the same wrong thing over and over as some seem to prefer.
It seems you have an inability to add something productive to a discussion or even respond to what's written instead of living in the voice in your head's distorted echo chamber.
It'd be nice if you could stay on topic instead of resorting to your usual personal attack chicanery while pretending your feelings didn't get hurt in another thread, where you tried to change both your and my side of the argument, and still ended up being wrong.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
Hopefully this is a darkest before the dawn situation and this results in the whole political gravy train system toppling, but probably not.
Democrats (and privately Republicans, too) just upset he's doing blatantly what they do discretely, putting their"democracy" at risk.
I did read the end of that first sentence I quoted, but I don't see anything in this story that even remotely points to this type of corruption trending anywhere but up. 'Hopefully' is doing ALL (not even most) of the work in your sentence.
... and as for the second sentence... I never understood that line. So loud-and-proud corruption is somehow better because they're not trying to hide it? That makes zero sense by itself, and even less when you see how it seems to be normalizing the corruption as the population loses sensitivity to it.
I am on topic. Not using some whatabout making absurd suggestions about something that isn't relative to the topic. Don't blame me for your shortcomings. And now back to the topic at hand............
Police officers who defended US Capitol on January 6 sue to stop Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
(CNN) — Law enforcement officers who protected the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, sued the Trump administration on Wednesday to block implementation of a newly created $1.8 billion fund for allies of President Donald Trump who say they were unfairly investigated by previous administrations.
The lawsuit brought in federal court by Harry Dunn, a former member of the US Capitol Police, and Daniel Hodges, a current member of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department, claims that the new fund runs afoul of the US Constitution and federal law.
The men say the fund will potentially be used to pay individuals who participated in the attack and finance various paramilitary organizations in the country.
“If allowed to begin making payments, the fund will directly finance the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters who threatened plaintiffs’ lives that day, and continue to do so,” lawyers for Dunn and Hodges wrote in the 29-page suit.
“Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the fund to arm and equip themselves. The fund will grant their pasts acts of violence legal imprimatur,” the lawsuit claims.
“And, most chillingly, the fund will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded,” the lawsuit reads. “Dunn and Hodges did not back down on January 6. Instead, they held the line to defend democracy and the rule of law. They bring this case to do so once again.”
The lawsuit asks a federal judge in DC to declare the administration’s decision to set up the fund is unlawful and for an order blocking officials from taking steps to implement it and requiring any payments already made from it to be reversed.
The new fund, the men allege, violates a provision of the 14th Amendment that bars the government from paying debts “incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” They also say that officials violated federal rulemaking laws by creating the fund, which stemmed from a $10 billion lawsuit Trump, in his individual capacity, brought against the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year.
That law, the Administrative Procedure Act, allows individuals to challenge some government decision-making. Lawyers for Dunn and Hodges say that officials violated it by not following a different provision of federal law that says the government can only settle lawsuits after the attorney general agrees that such payment “is in the interest of the United States.”
“The payment of $1.776 billion into the Anti-Weaponization Fund to settle Trump v. IRS was patently not ‘in the interest of the United States,’” they wrote in the lawsuit. “Rather, it was a misappropriation of taxpayer funds orchestrated by the President to reward his allies and the rioters who committed violence in his name.”
The case comes a day after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was once Trump’s personal attorney, in testimony to a Senate appropriations panel, declined to rule out the possibility whether those who assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6 would be eligible for a payout.
“I will definitely encourage the commissioners to take everything into account when determining who should get compensation,” Blanche said, referring to a five-member commission that will review claims submitted by people looking to be paid out of the fund.
While the attorney general’s office would appoint the five members, Trump would have the ultimate power, being allowed to fire them at any time.
“But why not this specific issue of (being) convicted of violent acts against police officers?” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley asked. “You feel they should get compensation after being convicted of violent acts?”
Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday also declined to rule out the idea that those who assaulted police officers could get money from the fund.
“We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers,” Vance told reporters at the White House. “That doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely ignore some of the claims that they’re going to make.”
Hopefully this is a darkest before the dawn situation and this results in the whole political gravy train system toppling, but probably not.
Democrats (and privately Republicans, too) just upset he's doing blatantly what they do discretely, putting their"democracy" at risk.
I did read the end of that first sentence I quoted, but I don't see anything in this story that even remotely points to this type of corruption trending anywhere but up. 'Hopefully' is doing ALL (not even most) of the work in your sentence.
... and as for the second sentence... I never understood that line. So loud-and-proud corruption is somehow better because they're not trying to hide it? That makes zero sense by itself, and even less when you see how it seems to be normalizing the corruption as the population loses sensitivity to it.
The probably not was the closest representation of my expectations. Sometimes false/slim hope is the only hope you have to work with. Honestly, I think we've been pretty screwed for awhile. Too much power already concentrated in certain spheres.
To me, It has nothing to do with better. The whole system is filled with corruption. Corruption has been normalized already. I'm "hoping" the brazen outrageousness of Trump finally causes people to do something about all the corruption in spite of their already having been desensitized.
But, again, probably not. If this doesn't do it, it appears, to me, that there is nothing that will. So I "hope" it does prompt change.
At the same time, I don't want people to buy into the political theater that other politicians are against corruption itself and Trump is the only thing that needs to go to get rid of the corruption. It seems to me the quoted politicians are more against their own corruption being put at risk than corruption itself. We have decades of their actions to support that idea regardless of what the words they say are. Too many politicians treat "our democracy" as their route to riches and excess.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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