An amended lawsuit targets a sweeping immunity order signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that bars the IRS from auditing President Trump, his adult children, or their businesses, a move plaintiffs call an unconstitutional gift worth more than $100 million.
The complaint, filed by the legal group Democracy Forward, takes direct aim at a May 19 memo in which Blanche declared the federal government "forever barred and precluded" from investigating any action taken by the Trump family or their business entities before the memo's signing date. The suit is the first legal filing to challenge the immunity agreement head-on, The Hill reported.
At stake is a nearly 50-year IRS policy requiring career employees to audit the sitting president's tax returns every year he holds office. The plaintiffs argue the Blanche memo overrides that requirement, forces the IRS to shut down ongoing audits, and shields a potential tax bill of $100 million or more from any government review.
Democracy Forward's amended complaint in Floyd v. DOJ lays out the argument in blunt terms. From the filing:
"The President of the United States and his family are obligated to pay taxes owed, just like every other taxpayer, and, per the IRS's own policy, the IRS is required to audit the President each year he is in office. But the Immunity Order prevents the IRS from auditing the President's tax returns and from recovering any underpaid taxes. Under the Immunity Order, career IRS employees will be forced to terminate ongoing audits of the President and his businesses, giving the President a lucrative and unconstitutional emolument."
The complaint also cites a federal statute that prohibits the president from asking the IRS, directly or indirectly, to end audits of particular taxpayers, including his own. The specific statute number was not identified in the reporting, but the plaintiffs argue the immunity memo violates it on its face.
Democracy Forward further alleges the order is extraordinary given the sums involved. The filing states:
"That would be unprecedented under any circumstance; it is all the more remarkable considering that the President profited an eye-popping $2.2 billion after returning to the White House."
That $2.2 billion figure comes from the plaintiffs' complaint and has not been independently verified. But if accurate, it sharpens the question of why a blanket prohibition on IRS review was necessary, and who benefits.
The immunity order did not appear out of nowhere. It grew out of a lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS seeking $10 billion in damages over the leaking of his tax returns. Blanche framed the May 19 memo as a settlement closing out that litigation. Fox News reported that the order stemmed from a settlement agreement in Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, filed in the Southern District of Florida.
The day before signing the immunity memo, Blanche created a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund as part of the same settlement framework. That fund drew immediate scrutiny. GOP senators weighing Blanche's nomination for attorney general demanded its rescission, and Blanche complied, pulling the fund memo before his confirmation process advanced.
Conservative legal commentator Andrew C. McCarthy, writing in National Review, argued the immunity arrangement was worse than the fund itself. McCarthy noted that the immunity provision was deliberately omitted from the official settlement document:
"This is such an unseemly arrangement that it was omitted from the settlement document."
McCarthy described the core problem plainly: "The president's granting himself and his family immunity from further or future audits by the Internal Revenue Service, as well as any related prosecution for possible tax crimes." That framing, from a conservative commentator, not a Democratic operative, captures why the memo has drawn fire from the right as well as the left.
Blanche's decision to pull the anti-weaponization fund quieted one controversy but left the larger one intact. The immunity memo itself was never rescinded. And while Blanche shared a follow-up document on Sunday stressing that the May 19 memo applies "only retroactively," reporting indicates it made no significant changes to the original immunity order.
The "only retroactively" qualifier is worth examining. The memo covers all actions by Trump, his adult children, and their business entities that occurred before the signing date. That means every prior tax year, every prior business transaction, and every prior filing falls under its protection. The word "retroactive" does not narrow the scope, it defines it. And the scope is vast.
The rescission of the anti-weaponization fund, meanwhile, still leaves the door open for Trump to press in court to revive the matter. The fund may be gone on paper, but the legal architecture around it has not been dismantled.
Blanche's dual role in these events, as the acting attorney general who signed the immunity order and as a former personal attorney to Trump, has drawn pointed questions about conflicts of interest. The heated Senate hearing over the DOJ fund earlier this year previewed the kind of scrutiny Blanche would face as the legal and political fallout widened.
The amended complaint argues that Congress built specific protections into the tax code to prevent exactly this kind of arrangement. From the filing:
"Congress put into place substantial protections to restrict the president's access to tax information and prevent future presidents and their cabinets from carrying out partisan plots under the auspices of tax administration. The Immunity Order violates these protections and overrides an IRS requirement, in place for nearly 50 years, that the president's tax returns be audited by career IRS employees each year he is in office."
The plaintiffs' theory is straightforward: the president cannot use the Justice Department to order the IRS to stop auditing him. The statute exists to prevent that. The memo does it anyway.
The suit could also immunize Trump and his family from criminal investigations, though the full scope of the memo's reach on that front remains unclear. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An Obama-appointed judge previously voided Trump's IRS settlement and referred his attorney to the Florida Bar, a ruling that underscores how contested the legal foundation beneath the immunity memo has been from the start.
Several gaps remain. The court and jurisdiction where the amended complaint was filed have not been publicly identified in available reporting. The specific federal statute the plaintiffs cite has not been named by number. And the $100 million figure, the potential tax liability shielded by the memo, lacks a clear sourcing trail: it is unclear whether that estimate comes from the complaint, from IRS records, or from the reporter's own characterization.
The status of Blanche's attorney general nomination also remains an open thread. Senators were described as weighing his confirmation at the time the anti-weaponization fund was rescinded. Whether that nomination has advanced, stalled, or been confirmed is not addressed in the reporting on the lawsuit itself.
Trump, for his part, has continued to fight legal battles on multiple fronts. He recently petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll defamation judgment, and the administration has pressed for dismissal of excessive-force claims by Jan. 6 defendants on procedural grounds. The immunity memo fits into a broader pattern of using executive and legal mechanisms to close out liabilities, past, present, and potential.
Every American files taxes under the same rules, or is supposed to. When the attorney general signs a memo exempting the president's family from the agency that enforces those rules, the question is not whether it is legal, it is whether anyone in Washington still believes the law applies equally.