Here is how it worked.
Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service in 2024 for $10 billion, claiming an IRS employee had illegally leaked his tax records. Rather than take the case to court and fight it on the merits, the Justice Department — now run by Trump’s own attorney general — settled it. In exchange for Trump dropping his lawsuit, the government created a $1.776 billion fund using taxpayer money. The fund will pay out claims from people who say they were targeted for political prosecution under the Biden administration.
Jan. 6 defendants are expected to apply.
That is the deal. But it did not stop there.
The Quiet Addendum
Two days after the original settlement was announced, a separate document appeared on the Justice Department website. It was not announced. It was signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — the same lawyer who represented Trump before taking the job — and it went further than anything in the original agreement.
The addendum states that the federal government is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from prosecuting or pursuing any tax claims or examinations arising from tax returns filed by Trump, his family members, the Trump Organization, and all related trusts and affiliates before this week.
In plain terms: the IRS can never audit Donald Trump for any taxes he has already filed. The same protection extends to his children and his companies.
Brandon DeBot, the policy director of the Tax Law Center at NYU School of Law, called it a “breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system” and said the Justice Department does not have the legal authority to offer protections this broad. Legal experts also flagged a federal criminal statute that specifically prohibits presidents and executive branch officials from requesting the termination of IRS audits. The addendum does not just request it. It permanently forecloses it.
Who Gets Paid
The $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund will be administered by a five-member commission. People who believe they were targeted for political prosecution — particularly under the Biden Justice Department — can apply for payouts.
The Capitol Police officers suing to block the fund described it in their complaint as “a taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.” The two officers — Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who was inside the building on January 6, and Daniel Hodges, an active Metropolitan Police officer — filed suit Wednesday arguing that the fund has no legal basis, that no federal statute authorizes its creation, and that allowing Jan. 6 defendants to receive compensation from it violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which bars anyone who engaged in insurrection against the United States from receiving government benefits.
What Congress Did Not Do
No law created the Anti-Weaponization Fund. No vote was taken. Congress was not consulted. The fund exists because the Justice Department agreed to it as part of a settlement with the president — a settlement negotiated between the administration and itself, since the DOJ is a part of the executive branch suing on behalf of the United States government.
Legal scholars have pointed out the obvious conflict: the Justice Department settled a lawsuit filed by its own boss, agreed to pay out nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer funds, and then quietly published a document permanently shielding that boss from the agency responsible for making sure everyone pays their taxes.
No prior administration has done anything like it. Legal experts say there is no precedent for it. Courts will now have to decide whether it is legal.
The Bigger Picture
In the span of one week, the Trump administration created a billion-dollar fund to compensate people it considers political victims, permanently closed the IRS’s books on the president’s tax history, and blocked the one agency in the federal government with the tools to audit the people who run it.
Two police officers who were beaten trying to defend Congress on January 6 are now in federal court trying to stop the government from paying the people who beat them.