Trump's social media post, which aims at Harvard's tax exemption status, could cause problems for the IRS

President Donald Trump's public threat to touch Harvard University from its tax -exempt status could return to bite him, right -wing experts told NBC News.

In a social post on Friday, Trump actually said: “We will take Harvard's tax exemption status away. It is what you earn!”

While the IRS has the authority to do exactly what Trump wants, his social media contribution on Harvard adds a potentially complaining fold.

“There is a way to do this,” said Genevievieve Lakier, an expert in the Law School of the University of Chicago, about the IRS, the Harvard of the existing tax status, but “it cannot be President Trump”.

Lakier, who described Trump's social media post as “stupid” and “not helpful”, pointed out a law that prevents the president and other government officials from providing the IRS as a great obstacle to the examination of taxpayers.

It is not the first time that President Harvard, as part of his wider crusade, threatened educational institutions, of which he believes that they do not support his agenda.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose his tax exemption status and be taxed as a political company if there is always political, ideological and terrorist inspiration/support of” illness? “He added:” Remember, tax -free status is completely dependent on acting in the public interest! “

Edward McCaffery, Professor of Tax Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, agreed that “it doesn't help the president politicize this.”

“The question arises that he leads this,” and suggests that the move “about retaliation” and “revenge” concerns instead of public order, which is something that Harvard could use to defend it.

Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a lawyer in Washington, DC, who specializes in non -profit organizations, said that the IRS would be confronted with a “uphill” if it decided to move against Harvard – one that could possibly take years.

Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman, said in a statement after Trump's post that the school would fight every administration campaign to change its status. The government has “freed from tax for a long time to support its educational mission”, he said, revoking this status “our ability to carry out our educational mission”.

“The illegal use of this instrument would generally have great consequences for the future of university education in America,” said Newton.

The White House did not respond to a request for comments.

The tax -exempt status enables institutions to do without certain taxes, and so that their donors can take deductions if they give gifts to them.

The Statut Lakier pointed out that he titled the title “ban on the influence of the executive on taxpayers and other investigations”. “

The 1998 law states: “It is illegal for an applicable person” – defines as president, vice president or employee of your office – “directly or indirectly to a commissioner or employee of the Internal Revenue service to carry out or terminate a test or another examination of a certain taxpayer in relation to the tax increase of such a tax yield.”

“This is intended for situations like this in which the President gives efforts,” said Lakier.

If Trump argued that he did not steer the campaign, but that he announced something that was already independent of him – that would also be problematic, because “he is trying to clearly do Harvard” what his administration already sued because he did the federal financing, she said.

“It looks reasonably like a threat” and “still unconstitutional,” said Lakier. “The first change clearly prohibits government officials to suppress speech,” she said, a position that the Supreme Court repeated last year in a case with the attempt by a New York official to suppress the National Rifle Association.

In a unanimous judgment in this case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Six decades ago, this court found that the” risk of a government company, legal sanctions and other means of compulsion against a third party to achieve oppression to achieve oppression “in order to refuse to apply. Inability. “

McCaffery said: “I think this could happen in the sense that the IRS could initiate movements and actions in order to take Harvard's status away, in the sense that the IRS Harvard could remove from its long -held status.”

He noticed that it had happened before when IRS Bob Jones University refused to tax exemption status, a private school that had banned interracial dating on campus and banned admission to people in interracial marriages. The Supreme Court confirmed the agency's decision in 1983.

McCaffery noted that the case began in the 1970s as an examination during the Nixon administration and was only solved in the Reagan government.

Tenenbaum said that the Jones case was still “the current standard of jurisdiction for how this has to be done”.

The IRS must carry out an exam or “examination” of the institution that can take months or over a year. If it decides that the status of the institution should be revoked, the company can essentially appeal to the IRS, said Tenenbaum. If the institution loses this appointment, its status would revoke, but it could question this determination in the Federal Court of Justice where additional calls could occur.

“Provided that the law is followed, this is the only way for the IRS to revoke the tax -free status,” said Tenenbaum. “There is no abbreviation.”

McCaffery said that every IRS move to revoke the status would probably focus on the administration's claims that the university had a record of anti -Semitism and that the programs of diversity, equity and inclusion did not break off, as the government asked.

“You have to convince the Court that Harvard violates public order” and “not political preference,” he said, adding that he is “skeptical” that the agency would be able to do this, especially if Trump repeats on social media again and again.

“It is not helpful when the president fights with the Board of Trustee, and it is not helpful that the president is fighting the fighting with the board of trustees,” said McCaffery. “If Trump indicates one -sided, he almost always undermines arguments that his own administration wants to take to court.”