Trump sues IRS, Treasury for $10 billion over tax returns leak
President Donald Trump, two of his sons and his namesake organization sued his own Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department on Thursday over the unauthorized disclosure of his tax information during his first term, for which a former IRS contractor pleaded guilty in 2023.
In their suit, the president, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization accused the two government agencies of failing in their “duty to safeguard and protect Plaintiffs’ confidential tax returns and related tax return information from such unauthorized inspection and public disclosure.”
In doing so, the government caused them “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”
The plaintiffs are seeking $10 billion in damages. The suit was filed in a federal court in Florida.
In 2023, Charles Littlejohn, a government contractor with the IRS, pleaded guilty to stealing secret tax information associated with former President Donald Trump and thousands of the nation's wealthiest individuals and leaking the materials to two news organizations in 2019 and 2020.
Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison. At his sentencing hearing in 2024, a federal judge characterized Littlejohn’s disclosures as “an attack on our constitutional democracy."
The Treasury and IRS did not immediately respond to requests for comment from ABC News.
