President Trump, Eric Trump, Don Jr., and the Trump Org filed a lawsuit against the IRS for leaking their tax returns.
They are seeking $10 billion in damages.
In September 2023, federal prosecutors charged a former IRS contractor who worked for the agency from 2018 to 2020 with unlawfully obtaining and disseminating the tax details of a high-ranking public official and numerous affluent Americans to media outlets.
According to court documents and an official press release from the Department of Justice, Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, D.C., stole tax return information associated with a high-ranking government official, referred to as Public Official A – now known as Donald Trump. He then disclosed this information to a news organization identified as News Organization 1 – now known as The New York Times.
Littlejohn reportedly stole IRS information on thousands of wealthy people. The stolen information was then disseminated to two news outlets (New York Times and ProPublica).
“In July and August 2020, Littlejohn separately stole tax return information for thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals. Littlejohn was again able to evade IRS detection. In November 2020, Littlejohn disclosed this tax return information to News Organization 2, which published over 50 articles using the stolen data. Littlejohn then obstructed the forthcoming investigation into his conduct by deleting and destroying evidence of his disclosures,” the DOJ previously said.
Littlejohn was only sentenced to five years in prison. Political leaders said he should have been sentenced to 60 years.
“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told CNBC.
CNBC reported:
President Donald Trump, his two eldest sons, and his family business sued the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Treasury Department over alleged leaks of their confidential tax information, court records showed Thursday.
The plaintiffs seek at least $10 billion in damages, according to the lawsuit in Miami federal court.
The civil complaint alleges that the IRS and Treasury failed in their obligation to prevent the leak of those tax records by former IRS employee Charles “Chaz” Littlejohn in 2019 and 2020.
In addition to Trump, the plaintiffs are his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, which the sons run.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told CNBC in a statement, “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people.”
