President Donald Trump has taken legal action against the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), demanding $10 billion in damages. He alleges that leaked tax returns have inflicted severe harm upon his business interests.
President, acting in a personal capacity alongside his elder sons Eric and Donald Jr and The Trump Organisation, filed the suit on Thursday. It contends that the IRS and the US Treasury Department failed in their legal “duty to safeguard and protect Plaintiffs’ confidential tax returns.”
This legal move follows years of intense public scrutiny over Trump’s finances, which began when he departed from established tradition and declined to release his returns during his initial presidential campaign.
According to the lawsuit, a former IRS employee named Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn was responsible for disclosing the tax documents to media outlets between May 2019 and September 2020.
The filing in Miami federal court states, “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.”
Littlejohn admitted guilt in 2023 for the unauthorised disclosure and is now serving a five-year prison sentence.
The leak led to a September 2020 report by The New York Times, which revealed that Trump paid merely $750 in federal income tax for both 2016 and 2017. The publication further stated he paid no federal income tax at all in 10 of the 15 years prior.
This is not the first time the president has filed a legal claim against the federal government he oversees.
The New York Times previously reported that Trump sought $230 million from the US Department of Justice concerning investigations into his handling of classified documents and his actions following the 2020 election.
