Trump Sues IRS For $10 Billion For All Those Taxes He Never Paid
Gosh, wonder whether the IRS will settle?
Donald Trump is once again suing the federal government in hopes certainty of a great big taxpayer-funded payout. This time he’s demanding $10 billion from the IRS to cover the great harm done to him when a former IRS contractor leaked years of Trump’s tax returns to media outlets.
The complaint filed in federal court in Florida Friday says Trump is suing in his capacity as a private citizen, so no need to worry that this is some kind of corruption in his capacity as president. The suit also names Trump’s sons, Coked-Out Dipshit and The Other One, as plaintiffs, as well as the Trump Organization, which the complaint clarifies “includes The Trump Organization, LLC, as well as 418 other entities that received notices” from the IRS. We are not a business reporter, so we don’t know whether 418 is a lot of entities doing business under one name. Maybe it’s just average? Maybe someone who knows a lot about the money laundering real estate business could tell us.
Trump claims that the IRS should have prevented the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from accessing tax records for the Trumps, their company (all 419 pieces of it) and other wealthy people. Littlejohn pleaded guilty in 2024 and is now serving five years in prison for leaking the tax information to the New York Times, ProPublica, and other outlets. The complaint says that the IRS, which he was the boss of at the time, should have had better computer security that would have prevented Littlejohn from downloading the records.
Hilariously, NBC News says that Trump will “now face off in court with his own administration,” as if the leaders of the IRS, all Trump appointees, will somehow put up a fight.
Also too, when lady reporter Karen Travers asked Trump a question about the lawsuit yesterday, Trump had one of his automatic Asshole Outbreaks, sidestepping the question and complaining, “You’re a loud person. Very loud. Let somebody else have a chance.”
This is Trump’s second attempt to sue the US government he leads for its past sins against him; last fall, he demanded the Justice Department pay him $230 million for investigating him in all the crimes he managed to escape punishment for by getting reelected and also by having friends at the Supreme Court. That clusterfuck is still ongoing while Pam Bondi tries to find a plausible way to say sure, just hand him the money.
As for the leaks of Trump’s tax records, yes, we remember rolling our eyes and saying “now there’s a big fucking surprise” in 2020 when the Times reported, based on the records that we now know Littlejohn leaked, that Trump had paid just $750 in income tax in both 2016 and 2017, and nothing at all for 10 of the 15 years before he took office the first time. Now he wants billions in taxpayer-funded compensation for the scandal of him not paying taxes.
Also good for a chuckle: NBC News notes, without comment, that when the Times story broke, Trump called it “totally fake news” and “made up,” but that Trump also said that his tax information had been “illegally obtained.”
As one would, of course.
The lawsuit claims that the leak of the 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.”
It also says the information “adversely impacted President Trump’s support among voters in the 2020 presidential election,” and even gripes about how some of the reporting in ProPublica’s stories about the tax records was totally unfair and false, as if the IRS were responsible for that, too. It at least stops short of blaming the leak for the failure of the Melania movie, too, why not?
As the New Republic points out, there are one or two little problems with the lawsuit, like the fact that when the leaks took place, the president was Donald Trump, who was in charge of the IRS. The suit may also be past the statute of limitations, as former GW Bush deputy assistant AG Ed Whelan noted in a thread on Twitter. Trump should have brought the lawsuit “within two years after the date of discovery” by the offended party,” Whelan explains.
To get around that problem, the lawsuit pretends that even though Trump knew of the leaks in 2020, he and the other plaintiffs somehow couldn’t sue until they knew it was Littlejohn who stoled the information.
“But Littlejohn isn’t the defendant. Treasury and IRS are,” says Whelan. “And Trump knew back in 2020 that they had allowed the allegedly unlawful leaks. So that claim is time-barred.”
Well sure, that seems like it could be a problem, but if the IRS argues the suit should be thrown out, Trump the president might just fire everyone there for insubordination and being unfair to the plaintiff, Trump the private individual.
This is all perfectly normal and perfectly legal, and not the least bit corrupt, the end.
[Complaint in Trump v. IRS / AP / NBC News / TNR]
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In the meantime, under this particular maladministration all of this sacred personal information was given to Elon's little cadre of thieves who have all of our tax information, SSNs and a bunch of other personal info. But don't worry, they'll safeguard it real super well, just trust them.
Obligatory follow up: "Trump sues the Department of War for $5 billion dollars because they have not given him $5 billion dollars". . . .