President Donald Trump has filed a massive $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, accusing the agency of illegally leaking his confidential tax returns in what his legal team describes as a politically motivated violation of federal privacy laws. Apparently, “protecting taxpayer confidentiality” was optional for someone inside the IRS. Who knew?
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team told Fox News that “a rogue, politically motivated” IRS employee disclosed private and confidential tax information involving Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to media outlets, including The New York Times and ProPublica. According to the lawsuit, those disclosures were illegal and caused widespread harm by violating federal privacy protections. So much for neutrality.
The contractor at the center of the scandal, Charles Littlejohn, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to a felony charge of unauthorized disclosure of tax return information and is currently serving a five-year prison sentence. Littlejohn admitted to stealing and leaking Trump’s tax records to The New York Times and also disclosing confidential tax data about wealthy individuals to ProPublica. Evidently, he mistook his job description for “selective political activism.”
According to the lawsuit, Littlejohn testified in a 2024 deposition that the Trump materials he leaked included information covering all of Trump’s business holdings, making the breach even more extensive than previously known. Not exactly a small slip-up—it was a full data dump.
As previously reported, Littlejohn refused to testify before Congress, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights while appealing his sentence. Silence, in this case, seems to be the only strategy left.
The lawsuit sends a clear message: confidential tax records are not political weapons, and the law applies even to government insiders. President Trump is once again taking the fight head-on, defending not just himself but the principle that federal agencies must follow the law instead of playing politics. And in the end, accountability is exactly what keeps the system honest—something America can always use more of.
