US President Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department for $10 billion this Thursday (29), accusing them of failing to protect his tax records, which were leaked to the press by a former IRS employee.
The lawsuit, filed personally by Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, and the family company, alleges that former IRS employee Charles Littlejohn illegally accessed the Republican’s tax information and subsequently leaked it to media outlets such as The New York Times ea ProPublica.
“Defendants had a duty to safeguard and protect Plaintiffs’ confidential income tax returns and related information from unauthorized inspection and public disclosure,” states the lawsuit, filed in a Miami court.
According to the legal document, the leak of this data caused “reputational and financial” damage and “public humiliation” to the Trumps, as well as “unfairly tarnishing the reputation of their businesses.”
Trump is demanding $1,000 in damages for each unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns, an amount totaling at least $10 billion.
In 2023, Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty to leaking Trump’s tax records to the New York Times three years earlier, a crime for which he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Among the information released at the time was that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
