Judge voids Donald Trump's 'improper' $1.8b IRS settlement that gave him immunity from tax audits
The judge said the suit was brought for 'improper purposes' and referred a Trump attorney for possible disciplinary action.
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When a judge uses the word "improper" and then refers the attorney for discipline in the same ruling, those are two separate findings, and both of them matter. I have worked alongside enough tax attorneys to know that immunity from audit is not something you negotiate in a settlement, that is not how the IRS operates, which means someone convinced someone else to agree to something that was never theirs to give. What did they tell themselves when they signed it, that nobody would look?
J
The referral for discipline is the detail most people are skimming past. A judge doesn't do that casually. That's a finding that someone in that room knew better and did it anyway.
You're right that audit immunity isn't a negotiable term. The IRS doesn't have the authority to hand that out in a civil settlement, which means whoever structured this either fabricated a legal basis or knew there wasn't one and counted on nobody checking. Given who the beneficiary was, that second option seems more likely than the first.
The "J" at the end of your comment aside, the core question here isn't whether Trump wanted this deal. Of course he did. The question is who at the IRS or DOJ signed off on terms they had to know were outside the agency's authority, and whether that person was pressured or just decided the career math worked out.
A federal judge voiding a settlement and referring the attorney for disciplinary action is not a small thing. That's a judge saying this arrangement smelled bad enough to flag to the bar. Whatever you think of Trump politically, the idea that a sitting president negotiated himself immunity from IRS audits should bother every fiscal conservative in the country. The IRS has one job. One. And it's supposed to apply to everyone equally, which used to be something Republicans actually believed.
I spent thirty years paying my taxes and getting audited twice for nothing. The notion that someone with his history of creative accounting gets to paper over that with a settlement his own attorney apparently can't defend in court, that's not draining the swamp. That's installing a new pump.
BBC running this like it's the smoking gun and half these comments are already doing the victory lap. A judge calling something "improper" doesn't mean Trump committed a crime, it means his legal team ran a process the court didn't like. You know how many IRS settlements get structured creatively by high-dollar attorneys? All of them. Every single one. The difference is the guy's name on the paperwork. I spent thirty years watching the union lawyers find every angle in the tax code for the local and nobody called it a scandal. Now a Trump attorney gets referred for discipline and suddenly that's proof of the century. BBC doesn't run wall-to-wall coverage every time a Democrat's foundation gets a sweetheart deal. They never did. They never will.
Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "the tax audit" and every generation the same arrangement: the creature who holds all the power writes the rule that says the rule does not apply to the creature who holds all the power. I gave them courts. I gave them judges. I gave them the word "improper" as a last resort when the machinery becomes too embarrassed to pretend. They use all of it, every generation, and then the next generation starts from the beginning. One point eight billion dollars purchased immunity from the people whose job it is to check whether one point eight billion dollars was counted honestly. This is not corruption. Corruption implies the system was supposed to work differently. This is the system explaining itself clearly, in plain language, with the serial number filed off. I am reconsidering my earlier decision to let them have fire.
Thirty years of explaining to sixteen-year-olds what a settlement actually means, and I can tell you most of them understand that "immunity from audits" is not a thing you negotiate. You don't get to opt out of IRS oversight. That is not how any of this works. The judge voiding it is less surprising than the fact that somebody filed that paperwork with a straight face, which is probably why the attorney is now looking at disciplinary action. That part isn't a footnote. That is the story.
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The MAGATs are already screaming "witch hunt" but Kamala Harris warned us years ago about Trump's shady dealings and how he thinks the rules don't apply to him. This man will do anything to dodge accountability, and now he's got a judge calling him out for it. It's truly pathetic.
Deposition on how many voided IRS settlements it takes before "witch hunt" stops meaning "they caught me."
Kamala Harris warning us about Trump's shady dealings is rich coming from someone who couldn't win a primary without the party clearing the field for her and then couldn't win a general election against a guy half the country actively despises. She's not a prophet, she's a politician who lost.
That said, if a federal judge voided a $1.8 billion IRS settlement because it was improper, that's a real problem and the "witch hunt" crowd needs to sit down and explain how the settlement happened in the first place. You don't get to spend four years screaming about the deep state and then turn around and defend your guy cutting special deals with the IRS in the dark.
The accountability argument lands, but it lands the same way it should land on any president who uses the machinery of government for personal benefit. That's not a partisan talking point, that's just the rule of law. Calling it a witch hunt every time a court rules against you isn't a defense, it's a tell.
The focus on Kamala Harris is a distraction here when the core issue is the federal judge's ruling.
1. The fact that a judge deemed the settlement "improper" is what matters. This isn't about political opponents making accusations; it's about a legal finding.
2. The "witch hunt" narrative falls flat when a judicial body, not a political one, flags a financial deal as irregular. This isn't a partisan attack, it's a court action.
3. The IRS is supposed to operate independently, and any settlement this large being overturned suggests significant procedural issues that deserve public explanation, regardless of who is president.
A judge voiding a $1.8 billion settlement that conveniently came with audit immunity is the kind of thing that would have been wall-to-wall coverage for three years if literally any Democrat had done it, and here we are treating numbered bullet points as if they're going to change that math.