Trump’s Government Moves to Spare an Unhappy Taxpayer Named Trump – The New York Times

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Trump’s Government Moves to Spare an Unhappy Taxpayer Named Trump

No president has ever used the federal government to advance his own personal interests and those of his family and allies as expansively and openly as Mr. Trump has.

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By Peter Baker

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is covering his sixth administration and has written multiple books on the modern presidency.

May 20, 2026

It is hard to imagine that any previous president would have thought he could engage in such an audacious act of self-dealing.

Sue the government he runs, then settle the lawsuit with himself by barring the Internal Revenue Service from auditing his past returns. And as part of that deal, hand over $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to his allies.

President Trump has used the federal government to advance his own personal interests and those of his family and allies more expansively and openly than any past occupant of the White House. Any review of history would suggest that it is not even close.

But as Mr. Trump, the only convicted felon ever elected president, heads deeper into his second term, he seems even less inhibited by the rules, written or unwritten, that governed his predecessors. While deeply unpopular with the general public, he has demonstrated as recently as this week that he remains the undisputed master of his own party, and therefore appears to feel that he can do as he likes without fear of Congress standing in his way.

His self-granted writ of immunity from I.R.S. audits amounts to a get-out-of-audits-free card, essentially the equivalent of pardoning himself for any past offenses and forgiving any tax debt or penalties. While the status of any now-short-circuited audits is not publicly known, his action could theoretically save him from paying $100 million or more, based on past estimates of what his liability might have been under an unfavorable I.R.S. decision.

The I.R.S. audit immunity for himself, along with the taxpayer payout to his supporters — potentially including those who attacked the Capitol and beat police officers on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn an election that Mr. Trump lost — stand out in their brazenness, yet not in what they say about his underlying approach to governance in his sixth year in office.

Mr. Trump has so blurred the lines between his financial interests and his public office that it is hard to define where the lines lie anymore, or if they still exist. He, his family and his friends have made a fortune in the 16 months since he returned to power in ways that once would have been seen as conflicts of interest and possibly generated investigations.

“Presidents have had corrupt, even criminal, family members,” said Barbara A. Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, citing, among others, Hunter Biden. “But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Trump family in the level of graft achieved.”

She added: “They have won the presidency twice, emasculated Congress, created a supportive high court, and reshaped the law and institutions to absolve them of any wrongdoing, while making billions of ill-gotten dollars.”

See Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/podcasts/the-daily/trump-fund-irs.html?rref=vanity and https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/us/politics/jan-6-officers-lawsuit-trump-fund.html

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