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.
President Trump seems even less
inhibited by the rules, written or unwritten, that governed his
predecessors. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
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 the I.R.S. 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
exemption 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.”
Anna Kelly, a White
House spokeswoman, rejected the assertion.
“This is the same tired
narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family and
his administration for a decade,” she said. “President Trump only acts in the
best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected
him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and
his businesses from the fake news media. There are no conflicts of interest.”
While generally not
covered by conflict of interest laws that apply to other government officials,
presidents especially in the post-Watergate era have followed certain practices
and abided by self-imposed limits to assure the public and feared a political
price, at the least, if they did not. But Mr. Trump, already shielded from
further criminal prosecution for acts deemed to be official under a new
presidential immunity doctrine devised by the Supreme Court, has dispensed with
such customs.
Just last week, a
disclosure form indicated that Mr. Trump’s investment portfolio executed more than 3,600 trades in the first three
months of this year alone, many involving companies that he has favored with
access or policies. His portfolio bought stock in companies run by 15 of the 17
chief executives he brought with him to China last week. The timing of some
purchases has raised questions about whether they were related to statements he
made or to policies he embraced.
The Trump Organization,
his family-owned business, said that the trades were made by outside brokerage
firms, and that he, his family and his firm did not have any role in deciding
what stocks to buy or sell. But unlike other modern presidents, Mr. Trump has
not put his investments in a genuine blind trust, since, as the disclosure form
made clear, it is no secret to him what companies he has shares in as he goes
about making policy decisions.
His family has profited enormously off
his new cryptocurrency business at the same time the president has rolled back
regulation of the industry. Mr. Trump pardoned the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance,
which was involved in helping the Trump family build its crypto start-up. Jeff
Bezos, whose businesses receive federal contracts and depend on U.S. Postal
Service rates, approved paying an estimated $28 million to Melania Trump, the
first lady, for a self-promotional film streamed on Amazon.
Mr. Trump’s sons and son-in-law are
involved in multibillion-dollar business ventures in the Gulf Arab states at
the same time the president is making those nations favorites of his foreign
policy. An investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates made a $500 million investment in the Trump crypto
firm just days before his inauguration. The Trump administration later approved
the export of advanced chips to the U.A.E. Altogether, Bloomberg has estimated
that the family’s crypto investments have increased its net worth by more than $1
billion, at least on paper.
Image
The Trump family during the State of
the Union address in February.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
Polls show that most of
the public has concluded that Mr. Trump is leveraging the presidency for his
own benefit. A poll by YouGov in
March found that 54 percent of Americans believed the term “corrupt” applied “a
lot” to the president, up from 46 percent a year earlier.
Democrats lashed out
after the announcement of the $1.8 billion fund for Mr. Trump’s allies and the
I.R.S. immunity. “A stunning act of corruption,” said Senator Ron Wyden of
Oregon. “A scam,” wrote Representatives Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Jamie
Raskin of Maryland. “This one is just eye-popping unbelievable,” said Senator
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Even some Republicans indicated unease
with the arrangement. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader,
said he was “not a big fan” of the taxpayer fund for Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania went so far as to say that
“we’re going to try to kill it.”
But the Republican
congressional majorities, which eagerly pursued corruption allegations against
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family, have until now shown little interest in scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s
blending of personal and public interests. And Mr. Trump demonstrated once
again on Tuesday with the defeat of Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky in
a Republican primary that he still wields unrivaled power to punish those who
cross him.
Speaking with reporters
on Wednesday, Mr. Trump defended his lawsuit against the I.R.S. over a
contractor illegally providing his tax forms to reporters. The contractor has
since been convicted by the Biden Justice Department and sentenced to prison,
but Mr. Trump argued the agency itself should still be held responsible.
He nonetheless acted as
if he had nothing to do with the eventual deal negotiated by lawyers who work
for him, including the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was his
personal defense attorney in criminal cases before the 2024 election.
“I guess they made a
settlement of some kind,” Mr. Trump said. “I wasn’t involved in the settlement.
I could have been involved. But I didn’t choose to be.” He did not explain why
the release of his tax forms, even if the government were to be held liable,
should preclude him from being held responsible if he underpaid his taxes.
As for the $1.8 billion fund, it is to
go to those people who were supposedly mistreated by the Justice Department
under Mr. Biden, which could include the Jan. 6 attackers, who were already
pardoned by Mr. Trump. “People were destroyed,” he said. “They went to jail.
Their families were ruined. They committed suicide.” He made no mention of the
police officers who were assaulted or later died.
Mr. Trump is an
unabashed tax avoider — “that makes me smart,” he famously said in 2016 — and
his tactics have repeatedly drawn scrutiny. The Trump Organization, wholly
owned by his family, was convicted in criminal court in 2022 of 17 counts
of tax fraud, a scheme to defraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records
for doling out off-the-books perks to some of its top executives. The company
was given the maximum fine of $1.6 million. His chief financial officer,
Allen H. Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to 15 counts and spent several months in
jail.
For years, Mr. Trump
fought to keep his tax returns hidden from the public, unlike every other
modern president who voluntarily released them. Tax documents obtained by The Times in 2020 showed that he paid
only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, when he originally ran for president
on the basis of being a successful billionaire businessman, and only $750 in
2017, his first year in office.
In 10 of the previous 15
years, Mr. Trump paid no income taxes to the federal government whatsoever, by
reporting large losses. A yearslong audit battle with the I.R.S. could have
cost him $100 million absent this week’s arrangement, according to a Times
analysis of his returns in 2020, a sum that could be significantly higher with
six more years of interest.
Other presidents have
traditionally done whatever they could to avoid looking like they were skimping
on taxes, trading the markets, making money off policy decisions or using
taxpayer funds to reward political allies. While many modern presidents have cashed
in after leaving office, none have made the kind of money that Mr. Trump and
his family have during their time in the White House.
Even the most notorious presidential
financial scandals in history — Credit Mobilier during Ulysses S. Grant’s
administration, Teapot Dome during Warren G. Harding’s presidency and Watergate
during Richard M. Nixon’s tenure — did not come close to the money swirling
around the Trump family during his second term.
“Not only do the three
most infamous previous presidency financial-political scandals seem minor
compared to Trump’s,” said Ms. Perry, the presidential scholar, “but none of
the three presidents — Grant, Harding, Nixon — padded their own bank accounts.”
People around Grant and Harding traded public policy for money, but there was
no evidence that the presidents themselves profited. And the money raised by
Nixon’s team went to his campaign dirty tricks slush fund and hush money for
the Watergate burglars, rather into the president’s pocket.
As of Wednesday, Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Trump’s net worth at
$6.1 billion, up from $5.1 billion last year and $2.3 billion in 2024.
Mr. Trump has insisted
that he does not make policy decisions based on his own interests, and has
accused those who have investigated him and his allies over the years of
political persecution. But as he grows more settled in office, he appears less
concerned about the way his actions look. He told The Times in January that he saw no benefit
in following the presidential traditions of blind trusts, divestment of assets
or avoiding business deals.
“I prohibited them from doing business
in my first term,” he said of his family, “and I got absolutely no credit for
it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them.” Critics would
argue that he in fact did not fully distance himself from business in his first
term. But he noted that it did not make a difference: “I found out that nobody
cared, I’m allowed to.”
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times.
He is covering his sixth presidency and sometimes writes analytical pieces that
place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical
framework.
