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The President of the United States, Donald Trump, filed a civil lawsuit for $10 billion against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the Treasury, accusing both federal agencies of failing to prevent the leakage of confidential tax information about himself, his children, and the Trump Organization.
The complaint, filed in a federal court in Miami, alleges that the IRS and the Treasury “failed to protect and safeguard” private and financial information that was disclosed by an external IRS contractor identified as Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn. The document asserts that the leaks “caused reputational and financial harm to the plaintiffs and negatively affected voter support for President Trump during the 2020 presidential election.”
Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to leaking the tax records of Trump and other individuals to media outlets, including The New York Times and ProPublica. According to the U.S. prosecutor's office, the leaks were "unprecedented in the history of the IRS."
According to consistent reports from international media, the lawsuit also names the president's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, as co-defendants, along with the Trump Organization. The legal text accuses the IRS and the Treasury of having "publicly embarrassed" the president and of "unjustly tarnishing his business reputation."
Littlejohn, who worked for the defense and security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, accessed IRS tax databases and leaked information between 2018 and 2020. Following the revelation of his involvement, the Department of the Treasury announced the cancellation of contracts with that company, arguing that it "did not implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including confidential taxpayer information."
During the legal proceedings, Littlejohn admitted to having acted for political reasons and stated that he considered Trump "a threat to democracy."
In 2020, The New York Times published a report based in part on these records, revealing that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and did not pay taxes in ten of the fifteen previous years. The then-president described this information as "completely false news" and claimed that the documents had been "illegally obtained."
Later, in 2022, the House of Representatives —then under Democratic control— released six years of the president's tax returns, which revealed that he had not paid federal taxes in 2020, while in previous years he had paid very small amounts citing million-dollar losses.
Trump and his lawyers are now arguing that the leak and publication of that information constituted a direct violation of the confidentiality established in IRS Code 6103, which protects the tax records of any U.S. citizen.
So far, neither the Treasury Department nor the IRS have made any public comments regarding the lawsuit, according to information released by various American media outlets.
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