DOJ Has Shielded Trump, Family and Allies

SITUATION:

While the Justice Department has pursued Trump’s critics through investigations and indictments, it has also taken a series of actions that directly benefited President Donald Trump, his family and his political allies. Those actions took several different forms.

They include a federal judge’s handling of the classified documents case, a settlement that shields Trump’s finances from IRS scrutiny, a sweeping act of clemency, and a dismissed prosecution against a mayor who aligned himself with Trump. Each followed a separate legal path toward a similar outcome.

Some of these decisions came from career officials under pressure from department leadership. Others came from a federal judge appointed by Trump during his first term. Together they form a pattern that runs parallel to the cases against his critics.

THE TRUTH:

Judge Cannon and the Documents Case

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, was randomly assigned the classified documents case against Trump in 2022. She granted his request for a special master to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago, a ruling a unanimous federal appeals panel later overturned.

On July 15, 2024, Cannon dismissed the indictment entirely, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional (it wasn’t). The Justice Department under President Joe Biden had defended the appointment as valid. Smith later dropped his appeal after Trump won the 2024 election.

Two of Trump’s former co-defendants remained in the case even after Smith’s appeal ended. Cannon cited their pending status in a January 2026 order blocking the Justice Department from releasing any part of Smith’s final report on the investigation.

The Trump administration’s own Justice Department dropped the appeal against those co-defendants weeks later, and the appeals court dismissed it in February. Cannon did not lift her order. Two outside groups moved to intervene to force the report’s release.

Cannon did not rule on their motions for months. On Nov. 3, 2025, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found she had shown “undue delay” in resolving them.

The panel gave Cannon 60 more days to act, warning that further inaction could trigger a mandamus order compelling her to rule. She had let the motions sit unresolved since they were fully briefed months earlier.

Cannon ruled in December, keeping the report sealed but setting a February expiration date for her order. When that date arrived, she went further. On Feb. 23, 2026, Cannon permanently barred the report’s release, a decision now facing renewed scrutiny at the same appeals court that has repeatedly reversed her.

The IRS Settlement and $1.776 Billion Slush Fund

Separately, Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric sued the IRS and Treasury Department in January 2026 for $10 billion, alleging the agency failed to prevent a contractor from leaking his tax returns. The contractor, Charles Littlejohn, had already been sentenced to five years in prison for the leak.

On May 18, 2026, Trump voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice the same day the Justice Department announced a nine-page settlement. That agreement created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. They claim they were targeted by prior administrations, funded through the Treasury’s Judgment Fund.

The settlement also resolved two additional civil claims worth $230 million tied to the Russia investigation from Trump’s first term and the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search, according to ABC News. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not disclose the fund’s full terms during Senate testimony the same week.

Audit Immunity for the Family

A day after the settlement was announced, additional terms surfaced in a hyperlink attached to the Justice Department’s press release, first reported by Politico. Those terms barred the IRS from bringing any claims against Trump, his family or his businesses over past tax issues, permanently.

Legal experts raised a separate concern: a federal law bars presidents and other executive branch officials from requesting the termination of IRS audits. The IRS did not respond to press inquiries about the provision, and the settlement lacked a signature from anyone at the Treasury Department.

The Fund’s Reversal

The fund quickly became a sticking point in Blanche’s confirmation to serve as permanent attorney general. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) said they would not support him unless the fund, which could have paid out to Jan. 6 defendants, was formally killed.

On Aug. 2, 2026, Blanche issued an order stating, in a non-binding manner, the fund “is rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” Cornyn and Tillis said they were satisfied, and the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a vote on Blanche’s nomination for Aug. 4.

The rescission does not fully address the underlying audit immunity for Trump’s family. Blanche’s order focused on the fund itself rather than the separate tax provisions added the day after the original settlement.

January 6 Clemency

On his first day back in office, Jan. 20, 2025, Trump issued a proclamation granting clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Fourteen received commutations rather than pardons, all of them members of the right-wing Proud Boys or Oath Keepers groups.

Ten of those 14 had been convicted of seditious conspiracy or other serious charges tied to the riot. The clemency covered people convicted of assaulting police officers during an attack that injured more than 100 members of law enforcement, according to the Justice Department’s own accounting at the time.

The Babbitt Settlement

In May 2025, the Justice Department agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to breach the House Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6.

The officer who shot her had been cleared of wrongdoing by the same Justice Department in 2021. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said afterward that he was “extremely disappointed” and warned the settlement “sends a chilling message to law enforcement nationwide.”

Eric Adams: Protecting an Ally

The pattern has extended to allies beyond Trump’s own family. In February 2025, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop bribery and fraud charges against Mayor Eric Adams (D), who had publicly aligned himself with Trump’s immigration agenda.

At least seven prosecutors resigned rather than carry out the order, including the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon. Three more resigned in April after department leadership asked them to admit wrongdoing as a condition of returning to work.

U.S. District Judge Dale Ho dismissed the case in April 2025, and rejected the department’s request to leave it open for future revival. In a 78-page opinion, Ho wrote that the government’s position implied public officials could receive favorable treatment for political cooperation, calling it “disturbing.”

“Everything here smacks of a bargain,” Ho wrote, “dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.” His ruling ensured the charges against Adams could never be brought again, closing out one of the clearest examples of the same department extending protection to a political ally.

WHY IT MATTERS:

The first article in this series showed a Justice Department willing to bring cases against Trump’s critics that could not survive contact with a judge or a grand jury on their own merits. This piece shows the same department extending preferential and protective treatment to Trump, his family and his allies.

A judge blocking the release of a completed investigative report into a sitting president is not a routine legal dispute. Neither is an unprecedented settlement that bars future tax audits of a president’s family, announced through a hyperlink rather than a public statement.

Conservatives who value equal treatment under the law should find both halves of this pattern troubling for the same reason. A justice system that bends toward political allies is exercising the same kind of unaccountable discretion as one that bends against political opponents.

The Eric Adams case offers the clearest test of principle, because it does not involve Trump personally. Seven career prosecutors resigned rather than dismiss a case they believed had merit, and a judge found their concerns serious enough to close it permanently.

The Jan. 6 clemency and the Babbitt settlement raise a related question separate from politics. Both involved a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol that injured more than 100 law enforcement officers, and both resulted in outcomes that many in law enforcement itself have publicly objected to. Anyone with a “Thin Blue Line” bumpersticker or hat should be outraged.

None of this requires assuming bad faith on the part of every official involved. Judge Cannon’s rulings, the IRS settlement’s terms and the Adams dismissal have each been defended by administration officials on legal or policy grounds that their supporters find persuasive but legal experts find aggregiously disturbing.

When the same set of decisions consistently protects the president, his family and his allies while a separate set of decisions consistently targets his critics, the pattern itself becomes a fact worth weighing on its own terms.

SOURCES:

• Alliance for Justice, “Aileen Cannon” biographical summary: https://afj.org/nominee/aileen-cannon/
• NBC News, “Trump appointee Aileen Cannon blocks release of Jack Smith’s report on classified documents probe,” Feb. 23, 2026: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-appointee-aileen-cannon-blocks-release-jack-smiths-report-classi-rcna260237
• ABC News, “Judge permanently blocks release of final report on Trump classified documents probe,” Feb. 23, 2026: https://abcnews.com/US/judge-permanently-blocks-release-final-report-trump-classified/story?id=130412078
• Yahoo News (Reuters), “Appeals court finds ‘undue delay’ in Cannon’s handling of …” Nov. 3, 2025: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/appeals-court-finds-undue-delay-230412784.html
• MS NOW, “Delay still plagues Aileen Cannon’s handling of Trump’s classified documents case,” Dec. 23, 2025: https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/aileen-cannon-trump-classified-documents-case-report
• CNN, “New settlement term bars IRS from investigating Trump, his family for past tax issues,” May 19, 2026: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/19/politics/irs-barred-investigating-trump-new-settlement-term
• ABC News, “DOJ addendum to Trump settlement ends any IRS audits of him and his family,” May 20, 2026: https://abcnews.com/US/doj-addendum-trump-settlement-bars-irs-auditing-family/story?id=133124367
• Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting, “DOJ Settlement ‘Forever’ Bars IRS Trump Audits, Sparks Backlash,” May 21, 2026: https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/doj-settlement-forever-bars-irs-trump-audits-sparks-backlash/
• NPR, “Blanche rescinds $1.8B anti-weaponization fund in push for confirmation,” Aug. 3, 2026: https://www.npr.org/2026/08/03/g-s1-136864/todd-blanche-rescinds-trump-anti-weaponization-fund
• NBC News, “Acting AG Todd Blanche reaches deal with holdout senators to scrap $1.8B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund,” Aug. 3, 2026: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/acting-ag-todd-blanche-reaches-deal-holdout-senators-end-18b-anti-weap-rcna590525
• Wikipedia, “Pardon of January 6 United States Capitol attack defendants,” citing Federal Register Document 2025-01950: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack_defendants
• Just Security, “What Just Happened: Trump’s January 6 Pardons and Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers By The Numbers,” Jan. 22, 2025: https://www.justsecurity.org/106689/january-6-pardons-statistics/
• ABC News, “Ashli Babbitt’s family to receive $5 million in settlement with Trump administration: Sources,” May 19, 2025: https://www.yahoo.com/news/ashli-babbitts-family-receive-5-182535597.html
• CNN, “Judge dismisses Eric Adams case and says it cannot be brought again, defying Trump DOJ,” April 2, 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/politics/eric-adams-dismissal/index.html
• Washington Post, “Three more prosecutors resign in protest over NYC Mayor Eric Adams case,” April 22, 2025: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/22/three-prosecutors-resign-over-eric-adams-case-refusing-admit-wrongdoing/
• NPR, “Federal judge drops corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams,” April 2, 2025: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/02/g-s1-57386/judge-new-york-eric-adams