US judge voids Donald Trump's $1.8bn settlement with IRS that gave him immunity from tax audits

US judge voids Donald Trump's $1.8bn settlement with IRS that gave him immunity from tax audits Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Democrats and some Republicans criticised the creation of an "anti-weaponisation" fund following the initial settlement. ByBernd Debusmann JrWhite House reporter Published22 minutes agoA US judge has voided a legal agreement between President Donald Trump and federal agencies that granted him immunity from tax audits and allowed his administration to create a since-abandoned $1.8bn (£1.3bn) "anti-weaponisation" fund.The fund, intended to compensate individuals claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government, was unveiled in May in exchange for Trump dropping his personal $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But on Monday, US District Judge Kathleen Williams said the suit was filed for an improper purpose. She also referred a Trump lawyer to state authorities to determine whether ethics rules were violated and disciplinary action required.In the ruling, Williams cast Trump's lawsuit - which he, two of his sons and the Trump Organization filed in 2026 - as far from a dispute between two opposing sides. Instead, she described it as more of an action carried out by lawyers with ties to Trump and those who claimed to have been government targets.Williams wrote the lawsuit "was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute" between Trump and the IRS, which he controls as president. She also described the settlement as a bid to "provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law." In the initial lawsuit, Trump claimed that nothing had been done to prevent the leak of his private tax information by a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn. Just before the 202...