Trump’s IRS Immunity Deal Is Not Law. It’s Paperwork.

This insight was originally published by Slate under the title The Trump Immunity Deal Is Neither a Deal Nor Does It Provide Immunity.

A single sheet of paper sits somewhere in the files of the Justice Department announcing, in capital letters, that the United States is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from pursuing any claims against President Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization. One page. One signature.

Last week, Trump appealed the 56-page ruling in which Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida dismantled the settlement that produced it and sanctioned the lawyers who engineered it. Whether that page has any legal force is now a question for the court of appeals; the Senate, for its part, gave its answer by confirming the man who signed it as attorney general. The plain answer is that it has none.

In short, Trump’s tax immunity deal is unenforceable. Let me tell you why.

The lawsuit was never real. Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January, demanding $10 billion for the first term leak of his tax returns by an IRS contractor already prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. The Justice Department, whose lawyers ultimately answer to Trump, never mounted a real defense. By May the parties—who in every practical sense were the same side—announced a settlement under which, by the Justice Department’s own description, the plaintiffs received a formal apology and no money, while the government established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for claimed victims of Justice Department weaponization. One day later, Todd Blanche, then acting attorney general and Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyer, signed an addendum barring any and all claims concerning any matters now or hereafter pending before the IRS, the Treasury Department or “other agencies or departments.” By one estimate the waiver could be worth more than $100 million.

The plaintiff sued for money and settled for an apology plus something his complaint never requested and no court could have awarded: immunity, granted by his own subordinates. The defendant received nothing in return. And the document carries a single signature, that of the defendant’s lawyer, the plaintiff’s former lawyer. Litigation is supposed to be adversarial. This was a one-man show performed in two costumes.

Judge Williams said as much. The parties “worked in tandem and were never actually adverse,” she wrote, calling the lawsuit a pretext for a settlement “that had no viable basis in law or fact.” She sanctioned Trump’s lawyers and barred the government from invoking the agreement in any official proceeding. Article III courts decide cases and controversies, and a proceeding in which both sides want the same outcome is neither. The Supreme Court has refused to lend its judgments to collusive litigation since Lord v. Veazie in 1850. A settlement between parties who were never adverse is not the resolution of a controversy; it is a press release with a case number. Asked by senators whether the immunity remained in effect anyway, Blanche said yes; the ruling, he said, was under “review.” Court orders are not suggestions under review. Blanche leans on Williams’s concession that she cannot void the private contract. He should be careful with that argument, because as a contract the immunity was unenforceable before she ever ruled.

No one can bargain away federal tax liability in a tort settlement on any letterhead. Under Section 7121 of the Internal Revenue Code, the government may conclusively settle tax liability only through a closing agreement executed by the Secretary of the Treasury or a delegate, under prescribed procedures, final only as to the periods and matters specified. The Supreme Court held in Botany Worsted Mills v. United States in 1929 that where Congress prescribes the exclusive method for compromising tax liability, informal settlements by officials, however senior, do not bind the United States. If any sufficiently senior official could sign away tax liability with a memo, the revenue laws would bind only taxpayers without friends in the government.

The Blanche addendum fails every element. It is not a closing agreement. It was not executed under Section 7121 procedures. It specifies no tax periods or matters, purporting instead to resolve “any and all claims,” forever, before agencies it does not even name. And it emerged from a damages suit about leaked records that placed no tax liability in controversy. The document waives nothing. An IRS commissioner who opened an audit of the Trump Organization tomorrow would breach no judgment, statute or agreement. The only thing standing between the Trump family and an examination is the current management of the IRS. The immunity is not a legal status; it is a personnel decision.

Even indulging the fiction that the addendum is a contract, contracts require parties, consideration and terms that hold still. This one fails on all three. Blanche signed alone. The government received nothing. And the terms are being rewritten in real time by the sole signatory. He assured Sen. John Cornyn that “other agencies or departments” somehow binds only the IRS and Treasury, a reading Cornyn told him the text will not bear. Then, days before the committee vote, he posted two orders on X, one rescinding the fund and one “clarifying” the immunity’s scope. No plaintiff signed them, and the settlement itself provides that it may be modified only by written agreement of the parties. The arrangement now violates itself. A document one side signs alone and revises by social media post is not an agreement; it is a memorandum of intentions. And intentions do not survive elections. Nothing here binds a future administration, and courts almost never estop the government from disavowing promises its officials had no authority to make. “Forever,” in a document one side wrote for itself, means January 2029.

Which returns us to that single sheet of paper. The administration did not defy the tax laws. It counterfeited them. The document has the typography of law and none of its machinery: no adverseness, no authority, no statutory vehicle, no second signature. A counterfeit works only until someone examines it, and Judge Williams already has. The Senate spent its summer examining it, then confirmed the man who signed it. Confirmation can elevate the official; it cannot ratify the paper. The court of appeals examines it next; it will reach the same conclusion as Judge Williams. The immunity exists on a single page, signed by a single official, construed to mean whatever the current week requires.

That is not immunity. That is stationery.