Donald Trump Sues IRS For £7.5bn Over Alleged Tax Return Leaks To Media Outlets
President Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion (£7.5 billion), saying that a contractor leaked what should have been confidential tax returns to journalists.According to NBC News, lawyers described this as a politically motivated assault on the Trump family's reputationThe complaint was filed at a Miami federal court on Thursday and named both the IRS and the Treasury Department as defendants. Interestingly, the lawsuit was filed in a personal capacity rather than as president of the United States. Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, are also plaintiffs, along with the Trump Organization.A spokesman for Trump's legal team accused a 'rogue, politically motivated' IRS employee of handing private financial information to 'leftist media outlets', singling out The New York Times and ProPublica, Fox News revealed.Contractor Already Serving Five Years in Prison
Charles Edward Littlejohn's Go Fund Me page
Charles Littlejohn is the man at the centre of this scandal. The former IRS contractor worked for defence firm Booz Allen Hamilton before pleading guilty in October 2023 to a single felony count of unauthorised disclosure of tax return information.A federal judge handed him a five-year prison sentence in January 2024, per The Hill.Prosecutors called his leaks 'unprecedented in scope and scale'. The sentencing judge went further, characterising his actions as 'an attack on our constitutional democracy'.CBS News reported that Littlejohn had confessed to stealing Trump's tax records and deliberately passing them to The New York Times.The paper ran a series of stories in 2020 showing that Trump had paid just $750 (£600) in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017. Littlejohn also sent confidential tax data on thousands of wealthy Americans to ProPublica, including records belonging to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.Trump Claims 'Irreparable Harm' to ReputationCourt documents reveal that Littlejohn knowingly sought employment with the IRS with the intention of accessing Trump's financial records. He believed Trump was dangerous and thought Americans deserved to see their president's tax returns.'Defendants have caused Plaintiffs 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 complaint read.Trump's legal team claims that the IRS and the Treasury had failed to protect confidential taxpayer information. Additionally, they say the agencies acted either knowingly or with gross negligence. Trump's legal counsel wants punitive damages on top of the $10 billion (£7.5bn).Unusual Position of Suing His Own GovernmentThis is the first time a sitting president has sued agencies within his own Executive Branch, CNBC noted. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is also the acting IRS commissioner, was not named in the lawsuit.Just days before this happened, the Treasury had cancelled all its contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton. Bessent said the firm 'failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data'.Trump's lawyers maintain they only discovered the breach when the IRS sent formal notification in a letter dated 29 January 2024. Federal law permits individuals to sue over such disclosures but sets a strict two-year deadline.Part of a Broader Legal OffensiveThis is hardly Trump's only courtroom battle since returning to the White House. He is chasing $10 billion (£7.5 billion) from the BBC over its editing of his 6 January 2021 speech, and another $10 billion from The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on Jeffrey Epstein. The New York Times faces a $15 billion (£11.3 billion) claim, while JPMorgan Chase is defending against a $5 billion (£3.8 billion) suit.When asked last year about seeking money from a government he now controls, Trump conceded it was 'awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself'. He floated the idea of donating any award to charity or 'to the White House while we restore the White House'.
