The Trump administration permanently banned the IRS from auditing the president's tax returns, and those of his sons, his company or any affiliated trust. That move was announced a day after the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of Trump who claim they were mistreated by the Biden Justice Department. Geoff Bennett discussed more with former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Geoff Bennett:
In the span of 48 hours, the U.S. government, acting on orders from the Trump Justice Department, did something no administration in American history has ever done before.It created a nearly $1.8 billion fund drawn from taxpayer money designed to compensate allies of the president who claim they were mistreated by the Biden Justice Department. Then the administration permanently banned the IRS from ever examining President Trump's prior tax returns or those of his sons, his company, or any affiliated trust.That move was quietly announced a day later tucked into a DOJ press release. And there is a third development. New federal ethics disclosures reveal more than 3,700 stock trades made under President Trump's name in companies like Meta, Amazon, and Disney, among others, worth up to around $750 million in just the first three months of this year.That's on top of crypto ventures tied to the Trump family that have reportedly made more than $1 billion in profits so far.We're going to focus now squarely on that IRS settlement with former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who ran the agency in the Obama and first Trump administrations.Thank you for being with us.
