Trump’s Corrupt IRS Shakedown Backfires Badly as GOPers Turn on Him

The slush fund may be on life support, but this IRS immunity thing Trump wants is outrageous—and Democrats need to make Republicans own it.

Let’s acknowledge this up front: It’s good to see that Senate Republicans have—for the time being, anyway—forced Donald Trump to back off plans for a $1.8 billion slush fund for allies and insurrectionists. Trump suspended the idea after Republicans made it clear that they won’t pass funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement without legislative language starkly limiting the fund or effectively nixing it entirely.

So, yep: Shockingly, it turns out that some level of Trumpian corruption is too much for Republicans to stomach. That’s particularly so with Trump’s approval mired in the 30s and one corrupt imperial scheme after another—from the ballroom to the triumphal arch—polling horribly as the midterms approach.

Yet we may be getting scammed here in another way, folks. That’s because Trump and Republicans have offered zero clarity about the future of the other part of his slush-fund scheme: the grant of immunity from IRS scrutiny for Trump, his businesses, and his family members. Incredibly, this would “forever” bar IRS audits of past tax claims by the Trump clan or the Trump Organization. Democrats can try to make Republicans vote on that towering act of corruption, which might prove politically even worse.

As you’ll recall, both these moves—the slush fund and the IRS immunity caper—were included in a “settlement” that the Justice Department reached in Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the first-term leaking of his tax returns. The settlement itself is bogus: Donald Trump’s DOJ is “settling” by agreeing to allow Donald Trump’s government to hand a massively corrupt........

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