DOJ order bars IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and their businesses for prior tax returns

On May 19, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a one-page order, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, declaring the federal government "forever barred and precluded" from prosecuting or pursuing tax claims or examinations against President Donald Trump arising from matters pending — or that could be pending — before the Internal Revenue Service. The order extends the same preclusion to Trump's "related or affiliated" relatives, trusts, and business entities, and covers tax returns filed before the underlying settlement's effective date. The IRS — the agency whose enforcement authority the order forecloses — did not co-sign the document.

The order expands the $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" settlement that the DOJ announced the previous day, recorded separately in this archive, under which President Trump and his two adult sons dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the 2019 leak of Trump's tax returns. That Monday settlement made no mention of Trump's own audits; the Tuesday order folds them in. Reporting indicated that the practical effect is to foreclose a long-running examination of Trump's taxes that, according to earlier New York Times reporting, could have resulted in an IRS bill exceeding $100 million. After the order drew attention, the DOJ stated that the preclusion applies only to audits already underway and not to returns Trump files in the future.

The expansion drew bipartisan scrutiny. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he was "not a big fan" of the broader fund and did not see a purpose for it, and Acting Attorney General Blanche faced questioning about the settlement at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee budget hearing the same day. Treasury Department General Counsel Brian Morrissey had resigned a day earlier, within hours of the fund's announcement, without publicly stating his reasons. This entry records the order as an instance of selective non-enforcement: the executive branch foreclosing, through a Department of Justice settlement instrument, the enforcement of federal tax law against one named individual and his family. The Standing also notes the self-dealing dimension — the order shields the sitting president, his relatives, trusts, and businesses through his own administration's Justice Department — consistent with its broken-windows approach of recording such actions as part of an accumulating pattern.