Trump Reveals What He Wants to Do With Money From Bonkers IRS Lawsuit

The president has pledged to donate any money he wins from his unprecedented $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns.

“Any money that I win, I’ll give it to charity, 100 percent to charity, charities that will be approved by government or whatever,” Trump said in a sit-down interview with NBC News Wednesday, adding that he’d practically already won the suit.

“Scott Bessent is the head of the IRS. Pam Bondi is the head of the Justice Department. They are going to defend the IRS against you, their boss,” pressed NBC’s Tom Llamas.

But Trump shrugged that jarring comment off, acknowledging there had “never been anything like it.” Instead, according to Trump, the more palatable truth involved snatching billions from taxpayers to do with whatever he wants.

“What I would do? Tell them to pay me, but I’ll give 100 percent of the money to charity,” Trump said. One of those potential beneficiaries, according to the president, could be the American Cancer Society.

“You’d take it out of the system?” asked Llamas.

“No, I’m putting it back into the system,” Trump said. “If I give money to the American Cancer Society, I will give 100 percent of the money away to charity. I don’t want any of it.”

“Thirty-trillion-dollar debt, and we’re going to take $10 billion out of the system?” pressed Llamas, incredulously.

“Well I mean you give it away anyway, they give away a lot of money,” Trump responded. “I’ll tell you what, speaking about that, Minnesota and these other states—we have massive investigations going into fraud.”

Trump, in a personal capacity, sued the IRS and the Treasury in a Miami federal court last week for a breach that occurred between May 2019 and September 2020. The problem: The breach occurred during the first Trump administration, when Trump himself was in charge of governing those institutions.

Legal experts have questioned the validity of the suit, arguing that the president’s complaints have long passed the statute of limitations. They have also raised a plethora of concerns relating to conflict of interest, questioning whether the leader of the executive branch could attempt to take one of the agencies under his purview for billions of dollars.

Either Melania Trump doesn’t know the law, or she doesn’t care to follow it.

The first lady denied that she was using the White House in order to promote her unwatchable documentary, Melania, during a press conference on Wednesday—mere minutes after plugging the film.

“Why do you feel it’s appropriate to use an official White House event to promote your documentary?” asked CNN’s Betsy Klein.

“This is not promotion,” Mrs. Trump said. “We are here celebrating the release of the hostages of Aviva [Siegel] and Keith [Siegel].

“That’s why we are here, it’s nothing to do with promotion,” she added.

But just moments prior, Melania did exactly that, referring to a scene from her film in relation to the recently freed American Israeli hostages.

“It was an emotional meeting, and it is captured on camera and available to see in my new film, Melania,” she said of her first meeting with Aviva Siegel.

It is strictly illegal for federal officials to use their public office for their own private gain, according to the Office of Government Ethics. It is also illegal for a federal official or employee to leverage their position in order to assist their friends, relatives, or nongovernmental affiliates, such as businesses or, perhaps, film studios.

So far, Melania has failed to impress audiences or critics, though it has defied expectations at the box office. The film, which was produced by Amazon’s film studios, cost a whopping $75 million. By Tuesday, it had raked in $7 million, reported MS NOW.

In the United States, reports have circulated that the film has not organically filled seats but rather relied on “fake ticket sales” or bulk seat purchases that were distributed to senior citizen centers or Republican activists for screenings over the weekend. In the U.K., the documentary’s premiere sold just one ticket.

But the eyes that did catch the flick were overwhelmingly unimpressed. On Monday, The Guardian corrected its scathing review of the film, apologizing to its readers for giving the film a single star. “A formatting issue led an earlier version to be awarded one star, when the reviewer’s intention was zero,” the correction reads.

It’s not the first time that the Trump family has used the prestige of the Oval Office to push product, however. Last year, Donald hosted a Tesla commercial on the White House lawn during an international boycott of the Elon Musk–led company.

And in the midst of the pandemic, the president and his daughter Ivanka used their federal platform to shill beans for Goya amid nationwide calls to boycott the company after its CEO said the country was “blessed” to have Trump as its leader. The stunt came during a push by the Trumps to increase the president’s appeal with Latino voters ahead of the 2020 election.

The Trump administration is probing claims of anti-white racism at Nike.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating the sportswear company over “systemic allegations of D.E.I.-related intentional race discrimination” against white employees and job applicants. The commission filed a motion in federal court in Missouri Wednesday to force the company to comply with a September subpoena.

The EEOC’s chair, Andrea Lucas, who first joined the agency as a commissioner after being nominated by Trump in 2020, filed a discrimination charge against Nike in 2024 under President Biden, when the commission still had a Democratic majority. Last year, Trump fired the agency’s chair, Charlotte Burrows, and appointed Lucas to the position. In its court filing Wednesday, the EEOC argues that Nike has fought the agency’s subpoena and has provided only partial responses to the government’s requests for information.

“The E.E.O.C. seeks information directly relevant to the allegations that Nike subjected white employees, applicants and training program participants to disparate treatment based on race in various employment decisions, including layoffs, internship programs and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs,” the court filing states.

Lucas has made targeting DEI her priority since becoming chair of the EEOC, the agency responsible for handling discrimination complaints of all kinds. Under Trump, that means claims of discrimination from marginalized groups take a back seat to the far right’s belief in anti-white discrimination, which Trump too believes is rampant. The Trump administration is trying to make an example out of Nike, a high-profile multinational corporation, to push its racist ideology.

A Republican senator wants Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE to stay out of his state.

Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker has come out against a proposed ICE detention facility in Byhalia, noting that the facility’s construction in the small town would not give the community anything in return.

“While I support the enforcement of immigration law, I write to express my opposition to this acquisition and the proposed detention center,” he wrote in his letter to Noem Wednesday. “This site is currently positioned for economic development purposes.... Converting this industrial asset into an ICE detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits.”

Wicker also noted “serious feasibility concerns” like water and energy costs and medical care. “Existing medical and human services infrastructure in Byhalia is insufficient to support such a large detainee population. Establishing a detention center at this site would place significant strain on local resources,” he continued.

Wicker’s rejection reaffirms reports of discontent among red states that are being forced to become proving grounds for immigration raids on the whims of the Trump administration. It also comes as multiple Democratic states and cities, including Maryland and California, have moved to place greater restrictions on the actions of federal immigration agents.

Democratic Representative Maxine Waters caught Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a clear and obvious lie during a congressional hearing.

“Did you write a letter to investors raising concerns about the impact of tariffs, writing that ‘tariffs are inflationary’? Did you say that at that time, yes or no?” Waters asked.

“Uh, no,” Bessent replied.

“OK … we have a New York Times article that agrees that you said that,” Waters said.

“Great, New York Times,” Bessent said, smiling.

Waters continued:

“Last summer, when you testified before a Senate committee, you said, and I quote, ‘There is no inflation. Tariffs are not being passed on to consumers.’ You were quite definitive, and even claimed that critics had ‘tariff derangement syndrome,’” she said. “Well, those comments are at odds with the statement you made to investors that tariffs are inflationary.... Are tariffs inflationary? Yes or no?”

“According to the San Francisco Federal Reserve … tariffs do not cause inflation,” Bessent said.

Bessent may have very well perjured himself, given the letter he claimed doesn’t exist certainly does. In that January 2024 letter, which Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller first highlighted, Bessent wrote: “Tariffs are inflationary and would strengthen the dollar--hardly a good starting point for a US industrial renaissance.” He then goes on to argue that Trump will weaken the dollar to “make US manufacturing competitive.”

Bessent attacked The New York Times to distract from Waters’s question, as if nothing reported about him in the paper could possibly be true. When asked to clarify, Bessent stated that if he even said that tariffs were inflationary, he was wrong.

This is all part of an effort to shield the average American from the harsh reality that they, not other countries, are shouldering most of the economic burdens of Trump’s tariff wars.

“Not only did he lie, but his advice was horrible on every level,” Representative Sean Casten commented. “Under Trump and Bessent they have imposed tariffs, overseen a collapse in the US dollar and delivered a collapse in US manufacturing jobs.”