President Donald J. Trump is preparing to settle his massive $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Treasury Department, and he says he will donate the entire payout to reputable charities instead of keeping a penny for himself.
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.
While the suit seeks $10 billion in damages, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he finds the figure so large and potentially controversial that he doesn’t want it to become a lightning rod for critics, according to Fox News.
Instead, Trump said the proceeds would go to “established and respected charities” such as the American Cancer Society and others that help everyday Americans.
“We’re thinking about doing something for charity where I’ll give money to charity,” Trump said. “We can make it a substantial amount. Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”
Trump added, “If I pay myself, that somehow will never look good. A lot of outside people said, ‘What a great idea,’ because nobody cares how much if it goes to a good charity. So you settle by giving charities a lot of money and I think we’re going to do something like that. We’re looking to do something like that.”
