President Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for at least $10 billion, claiming the agencies unlawfully allowed an IRS contractor to leak his tax returns and those of his sons and company.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami on Thursday, was filed in Mr. Trump’s personal capacity, and alleges that mishandling of his tax returns led to their improper disclosure to media outlets in 2020.
Mr. Trump’s oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr., and the Trump Organization are also plaintiffs in the suit.
“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 lawsuit alleges.
In 2024, an Internal Revenue Service contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking Mr. Trump’s federal tax records, as well as those of his oldest sons and the Trump Organization, to The New York Times in 2020. Investigators also alleged that Littlejohn sent a storage device with the tax information to another news organization, ProPublica, which has reported on the tax records of Mr. Trump and scores of other billionaires.
The Times reported that in 2016, when Mr. Trump won the presidency, he paid just $750 in federal income taxes, and he paid $750 again in 2021, his first year in office. Mr. Trump never publicly released his tax returns, unlike past presidential candidates.
Littlejohn, then a contractor at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, “abused his position” and “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law,” prosecutors said in court filings.
The suit does not target Booz Allen Hamilton or Littlejohn, but on Monday, the Treasury Department cited Littlejohn’s crimes and canceled all contracts with the firm, accusing the firm of having “failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service.”
The president’s lawsuit also alleges that the IRS made the “unlawful disclosures knowingly—or at the very least negligently or with gross negligence—because they willfully failed to establish appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to ensure the security and confidentiality of Plaintiffs’ confidential taxpayer information and protect from the exact unlawful disclosures that occurred.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement that “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.”
The IRS and Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The IRS lawsuit is the latest legal battle launched by the president since his return to office.
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump sued JPMorgan Chase Bank and its CEO Jamie Dimon for $5 billion in Florida state court, alleging the bank had closed his accounts in 2021 “as a result of political and social motivations.” In a statement, the bank said the suit “has no merit.”
Last fall, he sued The New York Times for allegedly defaming him by running a series of articles that scrutinized his business career. The newspaper responded by vowing to challenge the president’s “intimidation tactics.”
A federal judge tossed out the lawsuit against the Times, arguing the 85-page complaint was unnecessarily long. He directed Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file a version that follows rules requiring allegations to be “simple, concise, and direct.” The president’s lawyers later filed a 40-page version.
Mr. Trump also sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion in July over a story on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The paper vowed to “vigorously defend” itself.
