The union representing Internal Revenue Service workers asked a federal judge on Thursday to stop the Trump administration from granting President Trump extraordinary tax protections, saying the provision was illegal and could put its employees in the untenable position of carrying out unlawful orders.
The request, made in a revised lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., was the first time that anyone had used the courts in an effort to directly kill the sweeping tax plan, which emerged from a deal that Mr. Trump reached with his own government in May to drop a lawsuit he had filed against the I.R.S.
The revised suit built on an earlier complaint that asked the same judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, to block another measure that arose from the dismissal of the president’s complaint against the I.R.S.: a $1.8 billion fund intended to use taxpayer money to compensate Trump supporters who claimed they were the victims of political prosecutions.
The plaintiffs in the original suit targeting the fund — including a former federal prosecutor who was fired after working on cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — asserted that they had been wronged by the Trump administration. They argued that they would be prevented from filing claims with the fund because it was devised to compensate people who said they were harmed by Democratic administrations.
Judge Brinkema ultimately barred the fund from moving forward in June, ruling that even though Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, had said it was dead, Mr. Trump himself had repeatedly suggested that it could still be enacted. Now, the National Treasury Employees Union has joined the suit, adding complaints about the tax protections, which prohibit audits of tax returns that the president, the Trump Organization and two of his sons have already filed.
“It is unprecedented and unlawful for the I.R.S. to allow the president and his family to be exempt from review,” said Skye Perryman, the president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which filed the new complaint on behalf of the union. “We are honored to represent brave I.R.S. employees in this first-of-its-kind case challenging the unlawful scheme, while we continue to pursue the challenge to the $1.776 billion slush fund that will line the pockets of violent criminals.”
The union’s lawsuit asserted that the tax provision, which was signed by Mr. Blanche, violated a federal law prohibiting the president from interfering with tax audits. That law creates potential criminal penalties for any I.R.S. employees who are found to have obeyed such a political direction, a risk to members of the agency’s union. At the same time, the suit notes that any I.R.S. employee who refuses to drop audits of Mr. Trump could face retaliation.
Given that the audit protection could allow Mr. Trump to avoid paying tens of millions of dollars in additional taxes and penalties, the suit also claimed that the provision violated the clause of the Constitution barring presidents from receiving financial benefits known as emoluments.
“Under the immunity order, career I.R.S. employees will be forced to terminate ongoing audits of the president and his businesses, giving the president a lucrative and unconstitutional emolument,” the lawsuit said. “That would be unprecedented under any circumstance.”
On Sunday, under pressure from two Republican senators who were holding up his confirmation as attorney general, Mr. Blanche released a document clarifying that the tax provisions would extend only to Mr. Trump, his two adult sons and the Trump Organization. Mr. Blanche also reaffirmed that the measure would offer protection only against tax inquiries into past tax returns, not their future filings.
Moreover, Mr. Blanche issued a memo saying the $1.8 billion fund had been dissolved — although critics pointed out that his written assurances were not legally binding documents and were full of loopholes.
Last month, a federal judge in Florida denounced Mr. Trump’s suit against the I.R.S. over the leak of his tax returns to the news media as an improper act of self-dealing since the president was effectively on both sides of the claims. The judge, Kathleen M. Williams, accused the president and top officials at the Justice Department, including Mr. Blanche, of seeking to manipulate the court system to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the negotiations that had led to the creation of the fund and the tax provisions.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have appealed that decision.
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