President Donald Trump sued the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in a Miami federal court filing on Thursday. He claims the agencies did not stop a former IRS contractor from leaking the Trump family’s tax return information to news organizations.
Trump filed the suit with his sons Donald Jr., Eric, and the Trump Organization. The complaint states that the disclosures caused reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly damaged their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and harmed the public standing of President Trump and the other plaintiffs.
The lawsuit targets the IRS and Treasury, both part of the executive branch led by Trump. It seeks damages that, if awarded, would come from the federal government. Reuters reported that the plaintiffs claimed the agencies did not take necessary steps to prevent the leak. They may also seek punitive damages, arguing that the disclosures were intentional or resulted from extreme negligence.
This case stems from the actions of Charles Edward Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton and admitted to unlawfully disclosing tax information. A federal judge sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison in January 2024 after he pleaded guilty to unauthorized disclosure of tax return information.
Littlejohn provided data to The New York Times and ProPublica from 2018 to 2020. Prosecutors called these leaks “unparalleled in the IRS’s history.” The AP noted that the disclosure violated Internal Revenue Code Section 6103, a federal law that strictly limits access to taxpayer information.
The lawsuit brings back a dispute that became prominent in 2020 when The New York Times published an investigation based on tax-return information showing Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. ProPublica later published a series on the tax records and payments of wealthy Americans, including Trump, based on leaked data.
Reuters reported that the complaint stated The New York Times published at least eight articles, and ProPublica published at least 50 articles based on Littlejohn’s disclosures. The filing claims the reporting harmed the plaintiffs’ reputations and business interests and had a negative impact on Trump’s public standing.
The lawsuit was filed days after the Treasury Department announced it cut contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton related to handling sensitive taxpayer information. In that announcement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the firm did not implement proper safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it accessed through its contracts with the IRS.
Neither the IRS nor Treasury responded immediately to Reuters’ requests for comment, and AP reported that representatives of the White House, Treasury, and IRS were also unavailable.
Reuters added that attorney Alejandro Brito filed the suit. He has represented Trump in other recent high-profile civil cases, including lawsuits against media organizations.
This filing adds a new legal aspect to the ongoing political and legal struggle over Trump’s tax records. For years, Trump fought to keep his returns private before the House Ways and Means Committee, which was controlled by Democrats. In late 2022, that committee released six years of his tax returns.
The president has always courted controversy in relationship to his taxes since he decided not to release them after being elected back in 2016, famously claiming it was because they were under audit.
