Blanche faces heat over Trump IRS audit protection deal

Todd Blanche’s May 19 addendum, which barred the Internal Revenue Service from continuing existing audits of Donald Trump, his family and their companies, dominated his confirmation hearing Wednesday. The fight goes beyond one president: it tests whether the Justice Department can use a settlement to block routine tax oversight and alter a long-standing expectation that presidents remain subject to IRS review.

The addendum said the IRS was “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing examinations or reviews tied to matters pending as of that date. Blanche defended the arrangement as standard practice in IRS settlements, even as he told senators the proposed $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” attached to the deal was “dead.” He also acknowledged the underlying settlement had not been formally rescinded.

The deal grew out of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax information. Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing tax records in 2019 and 2020 and later received a five-year prison sentence. The dispute turned that case into a mechanism for protecting Trump from audits already underway, raising questions about who can shield a president from routine oversight and what authority allows it.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams sharpened those concerns on Monday with a 56-page order finding that Trump’s lawsuit and the settlement were collusive and that the plaintiffs acted in bad faith. Williams also referred Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar for possible disciplinary action. Her ruling intensified scrutiny of a deal that critics say was built to end the IRS’s review rather than resolve a genuine tax dispute.

Outside the courtroom, former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, former National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, and former Justice Department tax officials Kathryn Keneally and Gilbert Rothenberg have all challenged the settlement as a conflict-ridden bargain between Trump and his own government. Tax experts and watchdog groups have called the audit shield highly unusual, and reporting in 2024 said a long-running Trump tax audit could leave him owing more than $100 million.

The issue also split Blanche’s own confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. Republicans and Democrats pressed him on the arrangement, and Sen. John Cornyn said he remained concerned about Blanche’s role. Cornyn cited Williams’s finding that the case was collusive and brought in bad faith, while some Republican senators had still not committed to backing Blanche as the audit protection deal kept drawing scrutiny.