Donald Trump has initiated a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department, accusing them of leaking his tax details to the media from 2018 to 2020.
Filed in a federal court in Florida on Thursday, the lawsuit lists Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., along with the Trump Organization, as co-plaintiffs.
The legal claim argues that the disclosure of confidential tax records belonging to Trump and his organization resulted in “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, and unfair damage to their business reputations.” The suit further contends these leaks misrepresented them and adversely affected Trump’s public image, as well as that of the other plaintiffs.
In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, based in Washington, DC, was sentenced to a five-year prison term. Littlejohn, who had been employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security technology company, admitted to leaking tax information about Trump and others to media outlets.
Known by the nickname ‘CHAZ,’ Littlejohn clandestinely downloaded years’ worth of Trump’s tax records in 2018 and subsequently provided them to New York Times journalists, as outlined in court documents.
The New York Times subsequently published a series of articles in 2020, disclosing that Trump had not paid income tax in 10 out of the 15 years preceding his presidency.
Littlejohn later leaked tax information on ‘ultra-high net worth taxpayers’ to the investigative news outlet ProPublica.
The disclosure violated IRS Code 6103, one of the strictest confidentiality laws in federal statute.
Donald Trump is suing his own IRS and Treasury Department for $10billion over the leaking of his tax information to the media between 2018 and 2020
The suit, filed in a Florida federal court on Thursday, includes the president’s sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr and the Trump organization as plaintiffs
He was motivated by concerns about economic inequality and wanted to spur reforms to the US tax system, his defense team wrote in court documents.
Littlejohn stole tax records of other mega-billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
ProPublica published nearly 50 articles based on the information, revealing how the wealthy evade income taxes in the United States.
Trump became the first major US presidential candidate in decades not to release his tax returns when he ran for the White House in 2016.
He claimed at the time that his tax returns could not be released because he was under audit, although the IRS said there was no legal restriction on releasing taxes while under audit.
Six years of Trump’s returns were later released by the then-Democratically controlled House Ways and Means Committee in 2022 after a court battle.
Trump’s suit states that Littlejohn´s disclosures to the news organizations ’caused reputational and financial harm to Plaintiffs and adversely impacted President Trump’s support among voters in the 2020 presidential election.’
The president’s suit comes after the US Treasury Department announced it has cut its contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton, earlier this week, after Littlejohn, who worked for the firm, was charged and subsequently imprisoned for leaking tax information to news outlets about thousands of the country´s wealthiest people, including the president.
The filing alleges that the leak of Trump and the Trump Organization´s confidential tax records caused ‘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.’
Charles ‘CHAZ’ Littlejohn, the sx-IRS contractor sentenced to five years in prison for leaking Trump tax records
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the time of the announcement that the firm ‘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.’
Representatives of the White House, Treasury and IRS were not immediately available for comment.
The suit comes at a troubled time for the IRS which has been decimated during Trump’s first year back in office.
The IRS started 2025 with about 102,000 employees and finished with about 74,000 after a series of firings and layoffs brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While last year IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season were not allowed to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until after the taxpayer filing deadline, this year many of those customer service workers have left.
IRS CEO Frank Bisignano last week announced new priorities and a reorganization of IRS executive leadership in a letter addressed to the agency´s 74,000 employees, saying that he is ‘confident that with this new team in place, the IRS is well-prepared to deliver a successful tax filing season for the American public.’
