Trump's social media post targeting Harvard's tax-exempt status could create problems for the IRS

President Donald Trump’s public threat to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status could come back to bite him, legal experts told NBC News.

President Donald Trump’s public threat to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status could come back to bite him, legal experts told NBC News.

In a Truth Social post Friday, Trump said, “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”

While the IRS has the authority to do exactly what Trump wants, his social media post targeting Harvard adds a potentially complicating wrinkle.

“There’s a way they could do this,” Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Chicago Law School, said of the IRS stripping Harvard of its existing tax status, but “it can’t be at the behest of President Trump.”

Lakier, who called Trump’s social media post “dumb” and “not helpful,” pointed to a law barring the president and other government officials from directing the IRS to investigate taxpayers as a major obstacle.