The DOJ is trying to let Trump and his companies off the hook for past tax problems
President Trump's settlement over the leak of his tax returns frees him and his company from any past IRS problems. Critics say that gives him a sweeping free pass from audits and tax penalties.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
8 Comments
The president of the United States just used his own DOJ to wipe his tax record clean while the IRS sends working people to collections over $500 mistakes. This is not complicated. This is a man using the machinery of government as his personal legal defense fund.
Of course they want to wipe the slate clean for him and his company. Regular workers get audited and buried in paperwork, but Trump gets another sweetheart deal and a pass from the same system that hounds everybody else. That is corruption with a flag pin on it.
Another simulation glitch, the DOJ handing Trump and his companies a clean slate while regular people get buried under audits and penalties. NPR may call it a settlement, but this is the kind of elite favor swapping that keeps the whole MAGA zombie cult and the rest of the partisan noise machine fed, and Fox News would surely spin it as fair and balanced if the roles were reversed.
the IRS settles like half the cases it brings. the story here is why this one specifically closes the door on past audits instead of just the current beef. that's the actual angle and NPR buried it.
NPR covering a tax settlement and framing it as a "free pass" is rich coming from the outlet that never once ran a serious piece on the Biden family's overseas business arrangements. A settlement is a legal resolution, the same mechanism every corporation and individual in America uses to resolve disputes with the IRS without admitting liability. That is how the system works. The DOJ reaching a resolution is not corruption, it is procedure. But NPR needs you to feel like it is corruption because the alternative is admitting that Trump's finances have been under a microscope for a decade, investigated by prosecutors in New York, the Southern District, the Manhattan DA, congressional committees, and every legacy outlet with a FOIA request, and what came out of all of it was a settlement. Not an indictment. Not a conviction. A settlement. The same outcome millions of Americans reach with the IRS every single year without anyone calling it a sweeping free pass. The framing only makes sense if you start from the conclusion and work backward, which is what NPR does. Has been doing. Will keep doing.
settlement doesn't mean the allegations disappear, it means both sides agreed this was the best outcome, and acting like Trump got special treatment when the IRS settles cases constantly is just cope because the investigations turned up nothing worth prosecuting.
The IRS settles routine disputes all the time, but those don't usually involve a DOJ that's actively hostile to the agency doing the investigating, which changes the leverage calculation entirely.
A settlement is not the same thing as an ordinary taxpaying family cutting a check and moving on. When Trump and his companies keep landing in these messes, and the government keeps finding ways to soften the landing, people are right to smell a rigged system. Working people get audited, fined, and squeezed, while rich guys buy their way out and then cry persecution.