{"id":437953,"date":"2026-01-30T01:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T01:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/437953\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T01:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T01:57:07","slug":"trump-sues-the-irs-and-treasury-department-for-10-billion-over-leaked-tax-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/437953\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump sues the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion over leaked tax records"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> is suing the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for $10 billion, alleging that they failed to take necessary steps to prevent a former IRS employee from improperly disclosing his tax returns<\/a>, and those of his sons and his company, to news outlets.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed Thursday at a federal courthouse in Miami, says Trump is suing in his personal capacity, not as president. The other plaintiffs include two of Trump\u2019s sons \u2014 Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump \u2014 and the Trump Organization.<\/p>\n

“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\u2019 public standing,” the complaint said.<\/p>\n

The Treasury and IRS did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday night.<\/p>\n

A former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to 5 years in prison<\/a> in 2024 after he pleaded guilty the year before<\/a> to leaking Trump\u2019s tax records to The New York Times. The Times in 2020 published exclusive reporting that showed Trump<\/a> had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

Trump at the time called the Times’ story “totally fake news” and “made up.” He added that the information had been “illegally obtained.”<\/p>\n

Littlejohn admitted in federal court that he also stole tax records belonging to thousands of other wealthy people in 2019 and 2020, including billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

The IRS in 2024 issued a statement<\/a> calling Littlejohn’s actions “unacceptable,” and added that it had sent a statement to affected taxpayers.<\/p>\n

“It bears noting that the IRS has taken aggressive action<\/a> more generally to enhance data security \u2014 to ensure, to the fullest extent feasible, that nothing like the Littlejohn incident can happen in the future,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

Trump, who will now face off in court with his own administration, told reporters last year that he was seeking “a lot of money” in compensation from the federal government, based on past investigations into him by the Justice Department. The New York Times reported in October<\/a> that Trump was seeking $230 million in damages from the DOJ. Asked about the figure at the time, Trump told reporters, “it could be.”<\/p>\n

Trump added in October that he would be the one to approve the payout, and said “it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.” He said at the time that he would give the money away to charities or “to the White House while we restore the White House.”<\/p>\n

The White House and Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday night on the IRS lawsuit, or what Trump plans to do with the money if damages are awarded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump is suing the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for $10 billion, alleging that they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-437953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}