Trump administration says the IRS can't audit Trump
Here & Now Anytime
NPR
4.1 • 953 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
Then, Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, lost his primary on Tuesday. The president on Tuesday also endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn ahead of Texas Senate runoff elections. Republican pollster Whit Ayres discusses Trump’s power over his party.
And, the Trump administration is using the Pentagon and concerns about national security to stall wind energy projects across the nation. David Carroll, CEO of ENGIE North America, details the state of the wind energy industry.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | WBUR Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:06.3 | Congress could certainly challenge this, but Congress right now, I'm not sure would be willing to do that. |
| 0:13.0 | And we will see creative lawsuits brought, but it's a tough thing to challenge because of the way the president and the attorney general set this up. |
| 0:21.5 | Trump and his family get immunity from IRS audits. |
| 0:26.2 | Just as the president disclosed hundreds of millions of dollars of stock trades on his behalf |
| 0:31.4 | in the first quarter of the year. |
| 0:47.6 | Yeah. It's Wednesday, May 20th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR. |
| 0:48.7 | I'm Chris Bentley. |
| 1:02.2 | Today on the show, Republican primary voters deliver for Trump, once again denying re-election to a conservative member of Congress who got on his bad side. |
| 1:11.7 | Trump is strong in primaries, but primaries are not general elections. And Trump has a huge strength with his base, but he's toxic with independence and crossover groups. and that's going to come to ahead in a few months here. Also on Trump's bad side, wind energy |
| 1:17.3 | developers say the federal government has essentially frozen their industry by refusing to process |
| 1:22.7 | routine filings with the federal aviation administration. That process has stopped completely over the past |
| 1:29.0 | a year and a half. More on that coming up in about 10 minutes. But first, the IRS is, quote, |
| 1:36.9 | forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing, and quote, audits of Trump, his family members, or businesses. |
| 1:46.3 | That's what acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on yesterday as part of the |
| 1:51.1 | unusual Department of Justice deal that created a nearly $1.8 billion fund of taxpayer money |
| 1:58.2 | to compensate Trump allies and others who claim they were unfairly |
| 2:02.4 | investigated or prosecuted by the government. It's all connected to a settlement between the |
| 2:08.0 | federal government and the president who sued the IRS earlier this year over the leak of his |
| 2:13.0 | tax returns back in 2019. You are not alone, you're wondering how the head of the executive branch |
| 2:20.5 | can reach a settlement with his own government, or where that taxpayer money will go, or whether |
| 2:26.7 | the Trump family's new immunity from IRS audits amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card for tax evasion. |
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