Warren, Schumer, Raskin, Min Introduce New Bill to Stop President, VP from Abusing Power to Steal Taxpayer Funds

Warren, Schumer, Raskin, Min Introduce New Bill to Stop President, VP from Abusing Power to Steal Taxpayer Funds

Bill would impose new guardrails to address Trump's attempts to extract billions of dollars from American taxpayers

Bill One-Pager (PDF) | Bill Text (PDF)

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and Dave Min (D-Calif.), introduced the Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act, a new bill to ban the Presidents and Vice Presidents from abusing their power to steal taxpayer funds.

"While American families are getting flattened by skyrocketing costs, Donald Trump is trying to snatch up billions of taxpayer dollars to line his own pockets and settle personal scores. My bill will close the loopholes that enable this apparent corruption and ban Trump - and all future Presidents and Vice Presidents - from abusing their power and stealing Americans' hard-earned money," said Senator Warren.

"Since he took the Oath of Office, Trump has sold out the American people at every possible opportunity to line his own pockets. He has weaponized the Department of Justice as his personal law office, targeted his perceived political enemies, and grown his own wealth," said Leader Schumer. "It is such a blatant and obvious conflict for the President to be able to use the administration as his own personal ATM. We must immediately pass this legislation and close any loopholes that allow an executive to grift money from the American taxpayers."

"Trump's systematic exploitation of Executive Branch power to loot billions of dollars from American taxpayers is the ongoing scandal of this ruthlessly corrupt Administration. The 'Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act' will prevent the president from pursuing the emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a 'plaintiff' on bogus grounds and then settling the suit as 'defendant' for big bucks, a collusive settlement scam they recently executed with the disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who waltzed off with more than a million dollars for a bogus claim already dismissed by a federal court. I'm proud to be working with Senator Warren, a corruption-buster, on a bill to break up this shady grift and impose a little bit of law on this corruption-soaked presidency," said House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin.

"Over the past 15 months, we have seen unprecedented corruption from this administration, but this new abuse of power of providing huge cash payments to "settle" baseless lawsuits brought forward by Trump and his allies is a new low. The bill that Senator Warren, Leader Schumer, Ranking Member Raskin, and I are bringing forward would stop this backdoor bribery and bring some accountability back to the federal government," said Representative Min.

Since the start of his second term, President Trump has made numerous unprecedented attempts to extract billions of dollars collectively from American taxpayers through abuse of his executive power. In October 2025, President Trump sought $230 million from his Department of Justice (DOJ) to settle claims challenging DOJ's investigations into his alleged coordination with Russia during the 2016 election and his mishandling of sensitive government documents. In January 2026, President Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), seeking $10 billion in damages over an IRS employee's unauthorized release of Trump's tax data during Trump's first term.

Ethics experts have called Trump's efforts "a glaring conflict of interest." Trump himself has admitted that "it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself."

The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act would:

• Ban the sitting President/VP from collecting settlement payments from the United States by prohibiting the President, Vice President (VP), their spouses/children, a trust that exists for their benefit, or an entity they own or control, from collecting damages payments from the United States through a settlement or similar agreement with the government the President/VP leads.

• Pause filing and processing of a sitting President or VP's administrative claims byprohibiting federal agencies from processing or fulfilling damages claims brought by the President/VP. Also, prohibit the President/VP from filing administrative claims for damages while in office.

• Impose guardrails on the President/VP's federal lawsuits seeking damages by only allowing the President/VP to collect compensatory damages awarded by a federal court if the court appoints an independent counsel to represent the agency and makes all proceedings public.

• Cooling-off period during a former VP's term as President meaning if a former President's VP is elected President, impose the same restrictions on the former President while the former VP is still in the White House.

• Impose guardrails on claims by former presidents/VPs byallowing former presidents/VPs to collect damages from the U.S. government, but only if:

1. The federal agency appoints career expert staff to lead the agency's review or adjudication of any administrative claim brought by the former president/VP, and no official appointed by any president/VP is involved in handling the claim;

2. Any settlement agreement made with or payment made to the former president/VP is made public in the Federal Register within 7 days and Congress is given key details.

• Permit eventual filing by temporarily suspending the statute of limitations for claims by the President and VP.

• Penalties include subjecting Presidents/VPs who violate these restrictions to surrendering improper payments and criminal penalties, and/or civil penalties, with a lengthened statute of limitations so that a future DOJ after the current presidential administration can pursue penalties.

This legislation is endorsed by Democracy Defenders Action, Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

"When Congress passed the Federal Tort Claims Act, there is no way they could have anticipated that one day a sitting President of the United States would concoct a plan to willingly raid the treasury for millions of dollars based on legally unsupportable tort claims. Yet that is where we are," said Virginia Canter, chief counsel for anticorruption and ethics at Democracy Defenders Action. "Taxpayers deserve to know that the President isn't dipping his finger into the company till. The Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act provides them that assurance, and we thank Senator Warren, Leader Schumer, and Representatives Raskin and Min for their leadership in introducing this important bill."

"Under no circumstances should any President be able to financially enrich themselves while they are in office," said Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause President and CEO. "This legislation is a vital step toward upholding the principle that presidents should serve the interests of the people, not their personal wallets. Common Cause and its one million members urge Congress to swiftly pass this bill in order to prevent corruption and preserve the rule of law."

"Since returning to office, Donald Trump keeps finding troubling new ways to enrich himself at the taxpayers' expense. The president's lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion is emblematic of a pattern of self-dealing and corruption that appears pervasive in his administration," said Debra Perlin, Vice President of Policy for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). "CREW is proud to endorse Senator Warren's Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act, which would establish common sense guardrails to protect against corrupt payouts to the president and the vice president during their terms in office and after they depart."

"This bill provides commonsense steps to protect the public and to prevent presidents and vice-presidents from profiting from their position in cases where to control both sides of the litigation. The public cannot trust that such cases will be handled objectively when the conflict of interest is so blatant," said Janice Luong, Policy Associate for the Project On Government Oversight.

###