Trump RUSHES to SETTLE CASE as Impeachment Articles filed

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]With just a few days left, after four tumultuous years in power, Donald Trump has just become the first president in US history to be impeached twice.

[00:00:10]Members of the US House of Representatives have formally charged him with inciting insurrection. The place in the last half hour, our North America editor John Sopel has the very latest on this extraordinary development. John.

[00:00:24]Sophie, this time last Wednesday, there was a riot going on in Congress.

[00:00:29]Okay, I need you to pay very close attention to what I am about to tell you, because this story is genuinely one of the most brazen things to happen in American politics in living memory. And I am not saying that for drama. I am not saying it to get a reaction. I am saying it because when you hear the full picture, when all the pieces are laid out in front of you in sequence, the scale of what is being attempted here is almost hard to believe. Most of the coverage has been chopping this story into separate pieces and reporting on each one individually. But when you put them all together in the same frame, what you see is something that is not normal, not precedented, and not something that should be treated as routine political news. We are talking about a sitting president who sued a federal agency for $10 billion, an agency that he himself controls as president, and is now rushing to settle that lawsuit before a federal judge has the chance to rule that the whole thing is legally absurd on its face. We are talking about a proposed settlement that would take $1.7 billion of your taxpayer money and funnel it into a secret fund.

[00:01:24]Find a garrison town with the elegant marble corridors, a barracks, the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln looking down on resting servicemen.

[00:01:34]But impeachment 2.0 is different, very different. I believe the president must be convicted by the Senate, a constitutional remedy that will ensure that the republic will be safe from this man who was so resolutely determined to tear down the things that we hold dear.

[00:01:52]A fund with no disclosure requirements, no public accountability, and a commission whose members Trump himself would have the power to fire at will. We are talking about that money going to Trump-aligned organizations in approximately 1,600 people who were charged in connection with the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.

[00:02:09]And we are talking about all of this happening at the exact same moment that 13 active articles of impeachment are sitting in Congress with Trump's name on them, drafted by serious constitutional lawyers, and supported by more than 70 elected Democratic lawmakers. This is a lot. This is genuinely a lot. So, let's get into it properly because every single layer of this story is more alarming than the one before it. But, before we go any further, real quick, let's be honest, you can't really trust mainstream media anymore. That's why we built Pump Politics to bring you real stories, real context, and no corporate spin. If you want to stay ahead of the headlines, join our free newsletter.

[00:02:45]We'll send the news straight to your inbox every day. Just click the link in the description to join. And if you just want to support what we're doing, join us, be part of the community that actually cares about the truth. All right, let's get back to the video.

[00:02:56]Let's start with the IRS lawsuit because you need to understand what this actually is before we get to the settlement. And most coverage has not explained it clearly enough for people to grasp how strange this situation really is. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The central claim is that the IRS under the Biden administration wrongfully targeted him and organizations associated with him for political reasons. That is the allegation. And on the surface, that might sound like a political grievance that gets filed in court all the time. A former official suing the government agency he believes treated him unfairly.

[00:03:28]People do that. It happens. But, here is the part that makes this particular lawsuit unlike almost anything else in American legal history. Trump is now the president of the United States. He controls the executive branch of the federal government, and the IRS is part of the executive branch. The IRS commissioner serves under the direction of the Treasury Department, which reports to the president. So, what you have right now is a sitting president who who the executive branch suing an agency that is part of the executive branch he runs. He is the plaintiff. He is effectively also the defendant. He is, in the most literal practical sense, suing himself. And he is doing it in a federal court with a straight face and a $10 billion price tag. And a federal judge looking at the situation noticed.

[00:04:08]The judge set a deadline of May 20th and asked Trump's personal attorneys and the Justice Department, which legally represents IRS in federal court, to submit written briefs explaining whether a legitimate legal conflict between these two parties even exists. Because the judge is asking the question that anyone looking at this clearly has to ask, can you really sue an agency you control? Is there a real dispute here?

[00:04:28]Or is this a legal fiction? Or is this a legal fiction? And the administration's answer to that question has not been to answer it. It has been to run.

[00:04:37]That deadline, May 20th, is the engine driving everything in this story right now. Because the moment that deadline arrives and the judge reviews the briefs, the legal fiction holding this case together could collapse publicly and on the record. If the judge rules there is no real conflict because you cannot sue an agency you control, the lawsuit goes away and Trump gets nothing. No settlement, no fund, no money for allies, no audit immunity, nothing. So, the administration is in an all-out sprint to settle before May 20th arrives and the whole thing falls apart on its own in open court. According to reporting from ABC News and The Independent on May 15th of 2026, the Justice Department and the White House have been in active and urgent settlement discussions since May 12th and 13th. They are moving fast. They are moving with obvious urgency. And what they are apparently trying to lock in before that deadline is a deal that would get Trump to drop not just the $10 billion IRS lawsuit, but also two additional lawsuits against the Justice Department worth a combined $230 million.

[00:05:35]Those two additional suits relate to the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and investigations into whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. All of it bundled together. All of it resolved in a single package settlement in exchange for 1.7 billion dollars of taxpayer money flowing into a fund that will operate without public oversight and with Trump in a position to control who runs it. That is what is on the table.

[00:05:57]That is what is being finalized right now and the clock is ticking. And here is the term in that proposed settlement that should make every single person watching this sit up straight because this is the detail that changes the whole character of what is being proposed. Under the deal as reported, Trump will have the power to fire the members running the commission that oversees the fund. The president, the person whose political allies would be receiving the money, would control who sits on the body deciding who gets paid.

[00:06:22]If a commissioner asks too many questions, pushes for more transparency, or makes decisions Trump disagrees with, they can be removed by Trump. And on top of that, the commission would not be required to disclose its procedures for awarding payments. Not required to publish criteria, not required to explain decisions, not required to tell the public anything meaningful about how more than a billion dollars of their money is being distributed. Over 1.7 billion dollars of taxpayer money moving through a commission that Trump controls with no transparency requirements attached to it whatsoever. MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes described it on air as potentially the greatest heist in American history. And when you lay out the actual terms of what is being proposed, when you look at the structure of who controls the money, who can be fired, and what does not have to be disclosed, it is very hard to find the angle from which that description looks like an overstatement. Now let's add the IRS audit piece because this detail has gotten somewhat buried under the bigger headlines about the fund and the commission and it absolutely should not be. Earlier reporting from May 12th and 13th revealed that among the settlement options on the table was a provision that would require the IRS to cease any audits involving Trump, his family, or their businesses. Cease any audits, full stop. The president of the United States settling a lawsuit with the tax enforcement agency he controls in a deal that would potentially give him and his entire family permanent immunity from tax enforcement going forward. Think about what that means in practical terms. Every American citizen is subject to IRS scrutiny. Audits exist as a mechanism to ensure compliance with tax law, regardless of who you are or how much money you have. That is a principle. In this settlement, if that provision survives, will create a carve out for the president and his family from that principle. A presidential tax audit exemption written into a court settlement. And when Trump was asked about the money on NBC before the current terms became public, he said he would donate 100% of it to charity. That sounded good. That sounded clean. But the current deal as reported prohibits Trump from directly receiving payments, while entities associated with Trump would not be explicitly barred from receiving money. So, his organizations can get paid, his family businesses can be shielded from audits, and Trump can technically say he is not personally receiving anything.

[00:08:28]That is a very carefully constructed set of terms. And the careful construction of it tells you a great deal about the thought that has gone into structuring this to look one way while functioning another. All right. So, let's slow down and really dig into why this matters because there are a few angles here that I think most people are not fully connecting. And when you see how they fit together, the picture gets significantly darker. Let's talk about the January 6th defendants first because that is one of the most politically charged elements of this whole settlement. The proposed fund would direct 1.7 billion dollars in taxpayer money to two groups of people. The first group is organizations and individuals who claim they were targeted by the Biden administration, primarily groups associated with Trump. The second group is approximately 1,600 people who were charged in connection with the January 6th Capitol attack. 1,600 people charged in relation to an attack on the United States Capitol building, an event that resulted in deaths, injuries to over 140 police officers, and the first forced interruption of the peaceful transfer of presidential power in American history.

[00:09:28]And this proposed settlement will funnel taxpayer money, your money, public money to those 1,600 individuals through a commission that Trump controls and that has no transparency requirements. Think about what that looks like. Think about what that says to the officers who were injured that day. Think about what that says to the families of those who died.

[00:09:46]And think about the fact that this is being done not through Congress, not through any legislative process where elected representatives debate and vote on how taxpayer money is spent, but through a secret settlement between the president and agencies that answer to him. Now, let's talk about the conflict of interest at the center of all of this because it is extraordinary and it deserves to be stated plainly. The President of the United States filed lawsuits against two federal agencies, the IRS and the Justice Department. Both of those agencies are part of the executive branch. Both of those agencies ultimately report to the president. The Justice Department is literally run by a cabinet official who serves at the president's pleasure. So, when the Justice Department negotiates a settlement with Trump's personal lawyers, who is representing the public interest in that negotiation? The Justice Department's job is to represent the government, meaning the American people in federal court, but the government in this case is being sued by the president who runs it. The president's personal legal team is negotiating with the Justice Department, which the president controls. The outcome of that negotiation will funnel taxpayer money into a fund that the president will have the power to influence through his control over the commission. There is no independent party in this transaction. There is no one at the table whose primary obligation is to the American taxpayer rather than to the political interests of Donald Trump. That is the conflict and it is being resolved on a rushed timeline specifically designed to beat a judicial deadline that threatened to expose it. And the secrecy element is the thing that ties all of this together in the worst possible way. If the settlement goes through as currently described with the commission not required to disclose its procedures for awarding payments, there will be no public record of how $1.7 billion in taxpayer money was distributed, no documented criteria for who qualifies, no public list of recipients, no explanation of why certain organizations received payments while others did not, no accounting for how the commission weighed competing claims, none of it.

[00:11:36]The money goes in, the money comes out, and the American public gets to know exactly as much as the commission decides to tell them, which, based on the current proposed terms, could be essentially nothing. And remember, Trump has the power to fire the people running that commission. So, if commissioners start asking inconvenient questions or pushing for more transparency, they can be removed. That is the structure. That is the accountability mechanism, or rather, that is the explicit absence of one. Let's bring in the impeachment piece, because it is not separate from the IRS story. It is happening simultaneously, and it is part of the same political moment. On April 6th and 7th of 2026, Representative John Larson of Connecticut filed 13 articles of impeachment against Trump.

[00:12:18]The articles were drafted by Ralph Nader and constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein, two people with serious legal credibility who have spent decades working in this area. And the charges cover three major categories. The first is circumventing Congress's war powers, specifically in relation to multiple military actions Trump authorized without congressional approval, including actions tied to his threats to wipe out Iran's, and I am quoting from the actual articles here, entire civilization. The second is the militarization of domestic law enforcement, specifically the use of the National Guard in ways that critics argue cross legal and constitutional lines. The third is ethnic-based deportations, the detention and removal of citizens or immigrants based significantly on race or ethnicity or political opposition, rather than on individual legal findings. These are serious constitutional charges. They were carefully drafted by legal professionals.

[00:13:05]And they are sitting in Congress right now with over 70 Democratic lawmakers supporting either the impeachment push or calls to invoke the 25th Amendment.

[00:13:13]Senator Chris Murphy was among those who responded to Trump's Iran threats by calling for the 25th Amendment, describing Trump's statements as completely and utterly unhinged. That is a sitting United States Senator using those words on the record about a sitting president, and while the political math for actually removing Trump through either impeachment or the 25th Amendment remains very difficult because Republicans control the Senate, the accumulation of these formal actions, these official charges, these floor statements from elected officials tells you something important about where the political temperature is right now. We are not in a normal moment. We are in a moment where formal constitutional mechanisms for presidential removal are being actively and seriously invoked while the president simultaneously orchestrates a settlement that critics are calling the greatest financial heist in American history. Both of those things are true at the same time, and the overlap between them is not a coincidence.

[00:14:04]Okay, let's land this. Let's break down what all of this actually means, why it matters beyond the headlines, and what comes next. The first thing to understand is the timeline pressure and why the May 20th deadline is the engine driving everything right now. A federal judge looked at Trump's $10 billion IRS lawsuit and did something that courts very rarely have to do, question whether the lawsuit represents a real legal dispute at all. Because when you are the president of the United States and you are suing the IRS, an agency you control, the judge wants to know what exactly the conflict is. Who is suing whom here? The president cannot have a legitimate legal dispute with himself.

[00:14:39]So, the judge set a May 20th deadline for both sides to explain whether this case should even exist. And the administration's response to that deadline was not to answer the question.

[00:14:49]It was to sprint toward a settlement before the question could be officially answered in court. That is what the rush is about. That is why the Justice Department and the White House were in emergency settlement talks starting May 12th and 13th. They are trying to lock in $1.7 billion of taxpayer money before a judge potentially rules that the underlying lawsuit is legally incoherent. The urgency is not about justice. The urgency is about the clock.

[00:15:13]The second thing is about accountability, or more precisely, the deliberate and systematic elimination of it. Think about every layer of oversight that has been removed from this proposed settlement. The commission overseeing the fund does not have to disclose how it makes decisions. The president can fire commission members who ask too many questions. The entities associated with Trump are not explicitly barred from receiving payments. The IRS would potentially be required to stop auditing Trump and his family. And all of this is being finalized through a settlement negotiation between the president's personal lawyers and a Justice Department that the president controls with no independent party representing the public interest. Stack all of those elements together and what you have is a structure specifically designed so that 1.7 billion dollars in public money can move without meaningful oversight, without transparency, and without any accountability mechanism that the president himself does not ultimately control. Chris Hayes called it potentially the greatest heist in American history. That is a punchy way to put it, but the terms of the deal as reported do not give you a lot of room to argue with the description. The third thing is the January 6th dimension, and I want to sit with this one for a moment because I think it is the most politically explosive element of the whole story. 1.7 billion taxpayer dollars going to a fund that would pay out to approximately 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6th Capitol attack. This is happening through a settlement, not through any congressional vote, not through any legislative process where the American people's elected representatives debate and decide whether this is an appropriate use of public funds. It is happening through a deal between the president's lawyers and the agencies the president runs, and the commission distributing the money operates without disclosure requirements. So the public may never know exactly how much of that money went to which January 6th defendants under what criteria approved by whom. The people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, who injured over 140 police officers, who interrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history, could receive taxpayer compensation through a secret fund run by a commission that Donald Trump controls. If that outcome does not strike you as extraordinary, I'm not sure what would. The fourth thing is the impeachment and what it tells us about the broader political moment. 13 articles of impeachment filed by representative Larson, drafted by Ralph Nader and constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein, covering war powers violations, militarization of law enforcement and ethnicity based deportations. More than 70 Democratic lawmakers supporting either impeachment or the 25th Amendment. A sitting senator describing the president's public statements as completely and utterly unhinged. All of this is happening simultaneously with the IRS settlement push and the combination of the two creates a very specific and very significant picture of where this presidency is right now, just months into the second term. On one side, formal constitutional mechanisms for removal are being actively invoked by members of Congress. On the other side, a settlement is being rushed through that will move 1.7 billion dollars of public money into a secret fund that the president controls. These are not separate stories, they are one story. A story about a presidency under serious political and legal pressure responding to that pressure with moves that generate more pressure. So, what happens next? The May 20th deadline arrives in days. If the settlement is finalized before then, the lawsuit goes away and the fund potentially gets established, setting off what will certainly be an enormous legal and political fight over its terms, its transparency, its constitutionality, and its use of taxpayer funds. Congressional Democrats will challenge it. Watchdog organizations will challenge it. Courts may be asked to weigh in on whether the settlement terms are themselves legal.

[00:18:50]The audit immunity provision alone, if it stays in, is going to generate litigation. If the settlement is not finalized before May 20th, the judge's deadline arrives and the administration has to answer the question of whether this lawsuit can legally exist at all.

[00:19:04]That answer could be very uncomfortable.

[00:19:06]Either outcome creates more pressure on a presidency that is already dealing with 13 impeachment articles, more than 70 lawmakers pushing for removal, a China summit that most analysts described as a diplomatic disaster, a tariff policy that has been struck down twice, and a stock market that is watching all of it in real time. This is a presidency under pressure from every direction at once, and the IRS settlement story is not the end of something. It is the middle of something that is still very much in motion. Stay tuned because the next 5 days alone are going to tell us a lot about where this goes.