Another One

By Noah Rothman

Friday, May 15, 2026

 

For a while, it looked like the president was gearing up to engineer a resolution to his claim that the federal government under Joe Biden had been “weaponized” against him — specifically, that the IRS is implicated in the release of his personal tax returns to the New York Times in 2016 — in which the government would agree to a settlement. In short, the president would direct his Justice Department to concede to his lawyers’ claims, compelling his Treasury Department to shovel taxpayer-provided largess into his pockets.

 

That would have been hard for Republicans to defend (although they’d probably have given it their best shot), and Trump seems to have thought better of the scheme. That is not to say that the president’s preferred alternative resolution to this impasse is any better.

 

Reportedly, Trump will drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS so long as that agency establishes a $1.7 billion fund to be disbursed to “anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s ‘weaponization’ of the legal system,” ABC News reported. Like whom? The January 6 convicts who were pardoned or received clemency from the president, “as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.”

 

The settlement’s terms reportedly prohibit Trump himself from receiving direct payments from the IRS, but a statement from his camp suggests that those who are owed remuneration — the president’s family members and Trump organization officials — are not far removed from the president’s inner circle.

 

For all the good that the administration is doing in its effort to root out corruption, stories like these (and many, many other related allegations) are why the GOP will not be able to run on a record of unscrupulousness in government. Throw this graft allegation atop a growing pile of claims surrounding the president’s alleged efforts to use his position to enrich himself as well as his friends and relatives.

 

The donors who allegedly paid seven-figure sums for access to the president at his golf club, the shady pardons dolled out to crypto entrepreneurs with links to his sons, the alleged foreign emoluments, the pay-to-play claims, and the overlooked conflicts of interest — all of it will likely be subject to the scrutiny of a far less lethargic Congress next year. A few months from now, we’re all going to have to learn the ins and outs of whatever scandal the (likely) Democrat-dominated House is fixated on that week. It’s not hard to envision a situation in which Republicans regret their permissiveness as the full scope of the president’s suspected rapacity comes into full view.

 

Thus, it would probably serve them well to make a few discontented noises now, if only to dissuade the president from inviting even the appearance of corruption. Irrespective of whether Trump’s claims against the Biden-era executive branch have merit, resolving them in a way that reinforces the impression close to a majority of American minds (as of February) that Trump is crooked will come back to bite the GOP.

 

If Trump cannot be convinced to observe civic propriety for its own sake, maybe he can be persuaded against setting fire to the GOP’s reputation — if only to preserve his political legacy.