Trump's $10 billion IRS settlement talks reveal Trump's huge fear: analyst

President Donald Trump has revealed what he fears most with his controversial bid to sue his own IRS for $10 billion — a move political observers have warned is equivalent to simply looting money from the government, according to an analyst.

Trump filed the suit claiming that the IRS had failed to secure his personal and confidential information, leading to leaks of his tax returns, which he had promised he would reveal when he was on the campaign trail in 2016 but never did.

A federal judge, however, appears to be on the verge of throwing out the suit because it fails to meet the basic standards of a lawsuit, given that Trump controls both sides and there is no apparent "case or controversy."

Recent reporting indicates the Justice Department is considering a settlement to get Trump what he wants before that order can come down in around a week.

But Timothy Noah wrote for The New Republic that this whole episode underscores something the president is terrified of — that one day he will get a real and complete audit of his finances.

"According to Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of The New York Times, a settlement is in the works that would drop any IRS audits of Trump, his family, or his businesses," wrote Noah. "One advantage to this approach is that it would spare Trump having to pretend he’ll donate the proceeds to charity.

"Since nobody knows what the penalties from such audits would be, nobody can pinpoint such a settlement’s monetary value." Indeed, Noah wrote, it's possible Trump's lawyers want "some sort of indemnification against future IRS action akin to the blanket immunity the Supreme Court gifted him in 2024."

"On the other hand: If the IRS were to audit Trump’s tax returns rigorously, the likelihood is he would end up owing quite a lot," wrote Noah. "In 2024, the Times calculated that just one of Trump’s apparent violations would, if he were held accountable, cost him a penalty in excess of $100 million."

There's also a chance that Judge Kathleen Williams could block a settlement from happening at all — but if she throws out the lawsuit altogether, as she seems to be considering, "it’s not clear anything can stop the IRS from settling with Trump at that point, except possibly another lawsuit brought on behalf of taxpayers arguing that Trump’s in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses" — and in Trump's last term, the Supreme Court sat on emoluments litigation until it died.