President Donald Trump, his two eldest sons, and his family business are suing the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Treasury Department over alleged leaks of their confidential tax information, according to court records. The plaintiffs are reportedly seeking at least $10 billion in Miami Federal Court.
The civil complaint claims that the IRS and Treasury failed in their obligation to prevent the leak of those tax records by former IRS employee Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn in 2019 and 2020.
The plaintiffs include Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr, and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization which is run by the sons.
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A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told CNBC in a statement, “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people.” He added that “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”
Trump had said he would not release his tax returns because he was under audit, making him the first in almost 50 years to not disclose the documents. He said the same ahead of his 2020 re-election run.
However, the New York Times published an extensive report on Trump’s tax returns, in September 2020. The report revealed he paid only $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency and no taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. Trump released the documents himself in 2022.
The lawsuit states that both the IRS and Treasury Department “had a duty to safeguard and protect” such disclosures from being shared publicly but “failed to take such mandatory precautions”.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing tax data from Trump and thousands of wealthy Americans while working as a contractor for the IRS. In 2024, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
The lawsuit accuses him of weaponizing his access to “unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law”.
“Littlejohn committed these crimes because he considered President Trump to be ‘dangerous’ and a ‘threat to democracy,’ and that disclosure was, in Littlejohn’s view, necessary due to political ‘norms,'” the lawsuit says.
When asked in a deposition if Littlejohn was looking to cause some kind of harm to Trump, he said: “Less about harm, more just about a statement. I mean, there’s little harm that can actually be done to him, I think… He’s shown remarkable resilience.”
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It is unusual for a sitting president to sue their own administration, and the exorbitant damages figure being demanded raises various conflict-of-interest questions. However, Trump has made similar moves in the recent past.
The New York Times reported in October that Trump sought $230 million from the Department of Justice as compensation for its past investigations into him.